Let’s talk about Judgement.
Specifically the judgement of others and of how we negatively treat ourselves.
There is a saying that goes like this the only way to avoid criticism is to do nothing, say nothing and be nothing. Not much of a payoff for not taking criticism, a life of bland greyness.
So what’s the alternative?
How do you go through life striving for success and defend yourself against the inevitable criticism that will follow I hear you ask.
I’ve been searching for a good answer to that question for more than a little amount of time.
I think I have found a twofold strategy to do just that.
Here I should just state criticism will still come, we all know that trolls lurk the world over. However, moving forward the effects of their trollness will be diminished.
Step One – Focus On The Road
- The racing driver Mario Andretti had some great advice about what you should do if you were going into a spin. He said, “Don’t focus on the wall, focus on the road”. Turns out if you focus on the road your heading for you steer into it. You literally drive yourself into the wall. Racing drivers are taught to as they are spinning into the crash focus on the road as often you can steer yourself out of it if you only focus on the road. I am sure I don’t have to explain in this situation that the wall is the criticism and the road is the vision or goals you have for yourself. You don’t put your attention on the former because they steer you into the wall. Instead, you put your attention where you want to go.
Step Two – The Fishing Net
- The smaller the holes of a fishing net the more you catch. So it follows that the bigger the holes the more things slip through and don’t end up in your catch. So it is with judgment. You want to be looking for ways for you to make your mental holes bigger so the criticism and judgement that you face do not stick in your net but slide right on through and do not stick to you. The more sensitive we are the smaller our holes. So any small criticism is caught in our net. So we look for all the threads that we have that we allow things to be caught and we systematically cut them away. We deliberately look for the things that upset us when we are confronted with them and we release ourselves from that burden. All criticism has to be first accepted by us in a negative way in order to have power over us so it follows that we also get to choose to not be affected by it. You can deliberately remove the threads from your criticism net yourself. You get to decide what gets captured.
So there you have it two simple steps to immunising yourself to judgement and criticism. It takes a little practice but the results will be like coating yourself with Teflon.
Remember: Action on insights, is the Answer.
Thank you for reading.
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fnord
