I admire and compliment people who take feedback well in order to have a better life.
I’d even go so far as to say I think it’s one of the best traits someone can have—not only because it shows they have an abundance mindset and care about growing, but because it allows for authentic relationships.
We’ve all been there—having to watch someone we love who’s stuck in the middle of a vortex of their own making, unwilling to ask for help, and rejecting the advice that’s coming their way. It’s devastating because it doesn’t have to be that way.
I don’t think it’s possible to live a beautiful life if we can’t learn to tolerate constructive criticism. No one’s exempt because it’s impossible for anyone to read the label from inside the bottle; we’re too close to our problems and not always the best assessors of our own lives.
In last week’s blog, I shared what I’m learning about the ego and how it doesn’t want us to change. I’m just fascinated by how many of our “problems” are ego-driven. The word “ego” isn’t new to me, but I’ve never considered how much it affects us and how many areas of our lives it impacts.
This weekend, I listened to an episode of How I Built This in which Guy Raz interviewed Adam Grant, a very well-known organizational psychologist. Both guys have worked with hundreds of wildly successful people who’ve gone on to change the world and said every single one has pride and an ego.
Adam explained, “The ones who manage to have repeat success and bounce back and forward from failure and keep getting better are the ones who invest their egos in their future growth as opposed to their present comfort.”
I totally relate—every mistake we make or wrong thing we say is an opportunity for us to grow, but we have to learn to welcome the opportunity and to do so is uncomfortable—at first.
“I’ve worked closely with a founder for a long time,” Adam said, “who one day was told by a junior person, ‘I give your performance today a D-,’ and most of us can’t take that from an ego perspective so we start trying to make the case that, No, in fact, I deserve an A. Let me tell you why.”
Adam went on to say, “The law professor and conflict mediator Sheila Hein taught me something really valuable and said, ‘That’s your first score, and it’s already been determined. It happened in the past; the performance is over, and judgment has been made. You can’t change the first score. The best thing you can do is to try to ace the second score, which is to say, I want to get an A+ for how well I take the D-.’ And that, I think, is what a healthy ego response looks like— to say, Yeah I’m really motivated to prove myself to this person who thinks I suck and I know the best way to prove myself is to show that I’m willing to improve myself.”
So, I’ve been taking tons of feedback for the past eight years, and I’ve learned to take it very well. I had a slightly unfair advantage in that I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice (we all have a choice, BTW!).
Eight years ago, my life was crumbling, and at 33, I’d have bet $1,000,000 I wouldn’t live to see my 40th birthday, but I wanted to live. I found help, got helpful feedback about my life and the situation I was in, and committed my life to changing and growing. And in a couple of months, I’ll be 41. I believe my willingness to take feedback saved my life.
Thinking back before I started my healing journey, I was honestly doing my absolute best to read that label from inside the bottle, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t. It wasn’t that I wasn’t smart enough or that if I’d done something better with my life, I wouldn’t have needed to get help; it was that we all need help, and at 33, it was my time to be helped. For some, it happens earlier, for others later, but the important thing is not to let yourself become the person who refuses help.
The ego tells us we’re supposed to know everything and that if we admit we don’t, we’re dumb or we made a mistake. How can any of us know everything? We attend school to learn academics and take lessons to learn how to drive. Why wouldn’t we need help learning how to live our lives?
There’s a woman named Rachel Heart who has a podcast called “Take a Break.” She helps people learn to drink how they’d like, saying, “No one ever teaches us how to drink.” It got me thinking about how many things in life we’re not taught, and also how what we need to know evolves as we grow—relationships, careers, and goals for our health all look different at 40 than they did at 20.
By no means do I follow every piece of advice that comes my way, and I love how Brené Brown puts it: “If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I am not interested in or open to your feedback.”
I’m interested in feedback from people who are where I want to be. I want help with my career from those who’ve built businesses that don’t consume their lives with stress, work far less than 40 hours a week, make enough money to afford to live in a city like LA, and are impacting the world. I take health advice from people who understand my struggles and have developed tools to make the changes that I want to make. Also, I care to hear from the person who’s courageously speaking up, telling someone above them that their poor performance deserves a D-, even if the person getting the D- is me.
How will I improve if I don’t hear it? While it sucks to hear I’m not perfect, I’ve learned to remember that no one is.
To be perfect means to have all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics and to be as good as possible.
I say, tell that ego of yours that if it wants to be perfect and finds out that it isn’t, do the second best thing. Be someone who lets others in the arena tell you what they think and how you make them feel, and you’ll be closer to perfect than most people.
I now consider constructive criticism a compliment—it means that someone believes in my potential for self-improvement, and I don’t ever want to stop growing.
As always, I love hearing from you!
