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Growth Mindset
4 Benefits of Remaining Calm When You’re Criticized
There are crucial reasons to welcome—rather than resist—criticism.
Updated January 10, 2024 Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer
Key points
- If we struggle with self-validation, we’re liable to feel anxious or angry in reaction to being criticized.
- Despite their motives being suspect, there may be a useful, actionable truth in a hostile person’s criticism.
- Criticism can make you more aware of the need to further develop a skill set you’d believed was adequate.
No one enjoys being criticized. To the degree that all of us carry from childhood some residue of self-doubt, it’s hardly fun to be reminded of it. If we still struggle with self-validation when someone seems to question our judgment or competence, that negative reaction can set off shrill alarm bells in us.
In the moment, our sense of calm and confidence is impaired. But it doesn’t have to be this way. If we reconsider another’s criticism as an opportunity to learn more about ourself, the “criticizer,” or our now fraught relationship with them, we could actually appreciate it.
Authors have regularly emphasized the distinction between constructive criticism and destructive criticism. And the latter, disparaging critiques that lack reality-based suggestions on how to improve our performance or display ill will toward us and our contrasting perspective, are categorically dismissed.
Here, however, all that matters is whether there may be some actionable truth in what the criticizer is contending—independent of their possibly suspect motives.
Writers on the subject have also omitted or downplayed the unfortunate psychological fact that most people are reluctant to accept criticism because, unconsciously, their defense system strives to protect them from anything threatening to their self-esteem.
Beyond this proclivity there’s also a tendency to project back onto the accuser the same negative qualities we’ve been charged with. And both these contingencies are key to understanding why so many of us continue to repeat mistakes even after we’ve (unceremoniously?) been explicitly informed of them.
Still, it’s essential to recognize that—whether well-intended or not—we should endeavor to objectively comprehend unpleasant feedback and to welcome what instinctively we may initially feel compelled to combat.
Four Reasons to Welcome Criticism
Here are four reasons not to shy away from criticism, for fear of it hurting, frightening, or antagonizing you. Note that all these explanations relate to your criticizer's affording you the opportunity to reevaluate what you’ve done and the possibly false assumptions or erroneous conclusions you mistakenly may have made.
The more that, reflectively, you can take in the criticism (vs. taking it on), the more likely you’ll benefit from it. It should be added that whether the criticism is directed at you professionally or personally, each of its benefits has ramifications for your functioning in both areas.
Needless to say, another’s viewpoint toward you could be askew or invalid. Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth considering. You can open-mindedly weight its merits, despite finally taking exception to it.
Here are some of the key benefits of criticism:
1. Criticism can increase your awareness of the need to further develop a skill set you’d believed was sufficient to the task(s) at hand. The criticizer might bring up matters you hadn’t yet noted, or knowledge you don't yet possess. And your willingness to learn new things could make your work more efficient, accurate, precise, and up-to-date.
If you genuinely care about something, you don’t want to rest on your laurels when you could potentially do a better job than you’re currently doing. Plus, seeking to better your skills and performance is intimately linked to your reaching longer-term goals and aspirations.
2. Workplace criticism can enable you to gain a competitive advantage over your rivals—whether it be for a raise, bonus, or promotion. If you don’t want to be passed over because your performance is lagging behind others, it’s invaluable to be receptive to feedback—and regardless of how or from whom it’s delivered.
After all, knowing why your performance may be falling short can assist you in rectifying its deficiencies.
In personal matters, too, if you want to be more highly appreciated and respected by friends, family, and acquaintances, any feedback from them about limitations in how you’re coming across, or fulfilling your obligations and responsibilities, can be indispensable.
3. Criticism can help you recognize your blind spots. Unawares, virtually all of us develop bad habits—habits that unwittingly may offend others, expose our insensitivities, or betray our complacency, ignorance, or conceit.
Whether at first such adverse feedback makes you feel sad, anxious, angry or infuriated, it would be foolish or pigheaded—and certainly unwise—to rebuff this criticism simply because you dislike the feelings it provokes in you.
4. Criticism, indirectly, can help you be more compassionate, curious, and understanding toward others. It can strengthen your relationships in making you more conscious of their boundaries, needs, and expectations.
And if the other person is your partner, it can help that unique relationship become more resilient, emotionally safe and trusting, and intimate.
Tips on Becoming More Self-Validating in the Face of Criticism
1. Tell yourself—repeatedly, till it sticks—that whatever mistakes you made represented your best judgment at the time. Stress that in and of itself your oversights don’t signify intellectual incapability.
As an analogy, consider that no one gets the first draft of a composition just right. Consequently, if you give yourself enough time for corrections and refinements, your next version will be more successful—clearer, more emphatic, and more readily understood.
Even if you end up deciding that the subject you’re writing on is simply above your grade level (quantum mechanics, perhaps?), your efforts will help you identify what you may still want to work on, or abandon altogether. Either way you’ll learn something that earlier may have eluded you.
2. Don’t take criticism personally. For doing so is generally a misperception of the other person’s motives in pointing out some inaccuracy that may be beneficial for you to fix or amend.
Make sure you understand the other’s purpose in offering you feedback, particularly if it’s benign and done so respectfully. Or ask them what they had in mind when they unfavorably judged you. But, most importantly, take care not to let any of your troublesome insecurities govern your response.
3. Cultivate open-mindedness (vs. reacting defensively), for otherwise it will be impossible to take away anything of value from the criticism.
I’ve previously published other posts on delivering or receiving criticism, which complement or elaborate upon this piece. Here are links to easily access them:
Criticism vs. Feedback—Which One Wins, Hands-Down?
Why Criticism Is So Hard to Take, Part 1 and Part 2
© 2024 Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.
