Calling All Critics

Criticism Is the Price of Visibility

How to Hear It, Use It, and Keep Going

The more you do, the more visible you become. And the more visible you become, the more opinions you attract.

In this episode of the NoCryZone, Jim Best takes on one of the unavoidable costs of living an active, ambitious, expressive life: criticism.

The episode begins with the backstory behind “Never Be” by Brazen Candor—a song inspired by an online critic who confidently declared, “You will never be successful!” Rather than becoming angry or defensive, Jim did something more useful with the comment: he turned it into a song.

And that leads directly to the larger question:

How do you keep criticism from determining what you’re willing to attempt?

Jim explores why criticism often increases as we become more visible, successful, assertive, independent, or simply more ourselves. Some criticism is accurate and valuable. Some reflects legitimate differences in perspective. Some comes from people uncomfortable with our changing roles. And some is simply uninformed, malicious, or irrelevant.

The challenge is learning to tell the difference.

This episode offers a practical framework for doing exactly that:

Is it true? Is it useful? Is there something I should do about it?

Jim also shares his own history of being highly sensitive to criticism—and why learning that “feedback is the breakfast of champions” helped change his perspective.

The objective isn’t to become criticism-proof. It’s to become criticism-discerning.

Take the lesson. Leave the insult.
Take the information. Leave the hostility.
Adjust when appropriate. Then keep going.

Because criticism is information.

It is not a verdict.

And nobody else gets editorial control over your life.

Welcome to the NoCryZone, where we take a sharper view on living.

Questions or comments? Reach us at mailto:media@upwardsbest.com.

And make sure you grab yourself another fantastic week. There are plenty still available.

Follow Jim Best at UpwardsBest to listen, learn, explore, and stay connected to daily insights for positive change that’s both doable and durable.

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The NoCryZone is an UpwardsBest endeavor, produced by BestStoryAlive, LLC.

All rights proactively reserved.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:41

Welcome to the No Cry Zone, where we take a sharper view on living. I'm Jim Best, and I'm glad you've decided to join me. Today's intro song is Never Be by Brazen Candor. Let me give you the backstory on it because it folds right into what we're talking about in a no-cry zone today. First of all, it's not advice. I'm not telling anyone to never be successful, of course. I wrote it because I've heard from some readers of Upwards Best as well as No Cry Zone members, this basic comment. The more I do and the bigger the steps I take, the more I seem to get criticized. And then recently, and you might have seen it, among the many positive supportive comments we've been receiving, some of which are on social media, there were some negative ones. It's not a big deal. After all, in my career, I was a salesperson, a manager, and an executive. Here's a quick summary. In all those roles, criticism was just about a daily occurrence. One comment recently in particular made me laugh. Among the other logic-defined comments the person was flinging about, they ended with, You will never be successful, and completed the thought with a couple of exclamation marks. That inspired the lyrics to never be and Brazen Candor and took it and ran with it. We hope you enjoy it. And that brings us right into the no-cry zone. Criticism is the price of visibility. Why criticism comes when you start going somewhere? Success and achievement always invite criticism. Here's something I wish more people understood when they begin some of the more challenging, more assertive, more ambitious, and more meaningful things in their lives. It is this thought. The more active you become, the more visible you become. And the more visible you become, the more likely you are to be criticized. That's not pessimism. It's simple arithmetic. If ten people know what you're doing, you have ten potential opinions. If 10,000 people know what you're doing, you have 10,000 potential opinions. 10 is likely to be a group that you know and who are familiar with you and will try to be supportive. 10,000 opens up the field of critical possibilities. However, fear of criticism stops an extraordinary number of people before they ever find out what they could have accomplished. They don't necessarily fear failure. They fear what people will say about their supposed failure. They don't necessarily fear trying something different. They fear what people will think about them for trying. And sometimes they even fear success because success changes how other people see them. So they edit themselves. They become less ambitious sometimes, less expressive, less adventurous, less willing to take action. And consequently, they do less. If you change careers, somebody can question your judgment. And what I came to realize is that oftentimes people feel they do not own you the benefit of the doubt. Now, if you become healthier, wealthier, happier, more confident, more ambitious, more outspoken, or simply more of your authentic self, somebody may have something to say about it. So the objective for you cannot be how do I eliminate criticism? The better question, the better goal, the better objective is how do I become so good at handling criticism that it no longer determines what I am willing to attempt. That changes everything and opens up the pathways for you and greater accomplishment. But let's look a little deeper at this. Why do people criticize? First, sometimes people criticize because they're right. We shouldn't overlook that. We make mistakes, some of our ideas need work, sometimes we communicate poorly, sometimes we overlook something. Our performance could be better. That's probably true 90% of the time. So the criticism may sting, but it may also be very valuable. Secondly, people criticize because they see things differently than us. Different values, different experiences, different expectations, different tastes. That doesn't necessarily make either person wrong. Third, some people criticize because your choices make them uncomfortable. Sometimes they feel threatened by your progress. And when you change, you alter the relationship people have become accustomed to having with you. You become more ambitious, more assertive, more independent, more successful, and suddenly you're having trouble with them because you're behaving outside the role they had assigned to you. Remember, people like to put us in little boxes because it makes it us easier to deal with. They may try consciously or unconsciously to push you back toward the person they recognize. Fourth, people sometimes criticize because criticism gives them status, it gives them power. Finding fault can create the appearance of expertise. The person sitting in the stance can always tell the person on the field what should have been done differently. And finally, yes, occasionally criticism comes from envy, resentment, insecurity, or simple meanness. But let's be careful here. Don't automatically diagnose every critic as being jealous. That becomes its own kind of defensiveness. Instead, try to understand, don't confront. That may be one of the most useful principles for handling criticism. You don't have to psychoanalyze the critic, you don't have to defeat them, you don't have to persuade them, you don't have to convince them you're right or that you had a valid perspective, and you certainly don't have to retaliate. Our first job is simply to understand what it is we are hearing, what it is we're reading, what that perspective might teach us. So identify the criticism before you react to it. It's not always easy. We have a tendency to want to lash out. When criticism arrives, ask yourself, what kind of criticism is this? Is it informed? Is it constructive? Is it specific? Is it coming from someone whose judgment I respect? Is there evidence behind it? Is this person trying to help me improve or merely trying to make me feel smaller? And here's another important question. Does this person know enough about what I'm trying to accomplish to judge how I'm doing it? Because criticism from an informed source deserves more attention than criticism from an uninformed spectator. Remember, we are all entitled to our opinions. However, not all opinions are equally valid. Not every opinion deserves equal weight. This is an arrogance. That's discernment. The goal is not to become criticism proof. The goal is to become criticism discerning. Listen without surrendering. Consider without capitulating. Learn without allowing someone else's opinion to become your self-image. Because criticism is information. Yes, it might sting a little, and sometimes it hurts. But please remember it is not a verdict. And once we understand this, we're ready for the second part. What do we actually do with criticism? We're gonna take a break here, and when we come back, I'm gonna share with you what I've learned, both personally as well as what I picked up from studying criticism.

SPEAKER_03 10:21

You will never be successful to funny things day. It's sort of like an install back in the day. You can never install. There's nothing you can do to stop me. You will never be successful.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Uh quick summary here. Use what helps, release what doesn't, keep going. Now before we get into the heart of our second part, I should share a couple things with you. I used to be and still approached the dangerous edges at time, very sensitive to criticism. I was pretty immature about the way I would handle it. I'd sulk, withdraw, become offended, slighted, and resentful sometimes. Now it took me a while to realize this. Personally and professionally, those tendencies don't do much for you. Frankly, no one will love you more or pay you more for being sensitive to criticism. Then I learned a great way to look at criticism and my reaction to it. Feedback is the breakfast of champions. Now, was it a magical cure? Not quite. Has it helped tremendously? Yes. Do I think it will help others deal with criticism? Absolutely. And once criticism arrives, your first responsibility is to put it in perspective. One of the best ways to do that is to separate the size of the criticism from the size of your life. One person doesn't like what you're doing. Okay. How many people do? One customer complains. What are the other customers saying? One colleague thinks your idea is foolish. What does the evidence say? One person makes an unpleasant comment online. Why should one stranger with 30 seconds and a keyboard suddenly be given editorial control over your life? That type of perspective matters because criticism has a peculiar ability to become disproportionately large in our minds. You can receive 20 compliments and one criticism and spend the evening thinking about the criticism. That's kind of a human tendency. But you don't have to surrender to it, and you certainly don't want to overreact to it. Instead, evaluate the criticism using three questions. Is it true? Is it useful? Is there something I should do about it? Those questions convert criticism from an emotional event into usable information. If it's true, learn from the criticism. If it's partly true, take the useful part away and turn it to your advantage. If it's false but understandable, perhaps you need to communicate more clearly. And if it's malicious, uninformed, irrelevant, or simply somebody's preference, uh sometimes we have to let those things go. You don't have to have an answer for every accusation. You don't have to correct every misconception, you don't have to attend every argument to which you are invited. Remember, you don't want to make every disagreement or dispute an event that ends up at the okay corral. Instead, learn to benefit from criticism. This is where criticism can actually become an advantage. A critic may identify something your supporters won't tell you. That's valuable. People who like us often protect us, don't they? Critics rarely do. That means occasionally the person who irritates you most will reveal something enormously useful. So instead of immediately asking, why are they saying this? How dare they? Try asking, is there anything here I can use? That single question preserves your sovereignty. Because now the critic doesn't control your emotional response. You control what you extract, how you benefit from the criticism. And frankly, it may not even be intended as criticism at all. Some people are just more blunt than others. So take the lesson, leave the insult, take the information, drop the hostility, take whatever improves you, and leave everything else behind. Now you can also preempt a lot of criticism without becoming smaller. That is, without trying to do the things you want to do. Now we get to something even more powerful. Can you prevent criticism? No. But you can preempt a surprising amount of unnecessary criticism. How? First, be clear about what you're doing and why. Ambiguity creates room for people to invent motives for you. Secondly, manage expectations. If people know what you're trying to accomplish, what you can deliver and what you cannot deliver, and what they should expect, you eliminate a great deal of unnecessary disappointment. Third, acknowledge obvious weaknesses before somebody else weaponizes them. If something is experimental, say it's experimental. If you're learning, say you're learning. If you make a mistake, acknowledge the mistake. There's a tremendous power in being able to say, yes, I see that too, I'm working on that. How does the critic do with that? You've removed the ammunition. Fourth, don't pretend to be perfect. People are much more forgiving of imperfection than they are of pretension. And the fifth point, and this may be the most important, do not preempt criticism by preemptively abandoning your goals. That is the trap. You don't become less ambitious so people won't call you ambitious. You shouldn't become less successful so people won't resent your success. And you don't stop expressing yourself because someone might disagree. We don't make ourselves smaller to make criticism go away. That's not managing criticism, that's allowing criticism to manage you. Now, here is the perspective I'd like you to carry out of the no-cry zone. If you're going to live actively, you're going to attract opinions. Some of them may be critical. If you're going to create, somebody won't like what you've created. If you're going to lead, someone won't like how you are leading. And if you're going to change, someone will prefer the old you or have a different vision of what you should become. And if you're going to become more successful, there may even be people who were perfectly comfortable with your dreams until you started achieving them. Understand that. Don't become bitter about it, don't become combative. Don't spend your life fighting critics when you could be spending that energy building your life. So when criticism happens, we listen, we evaluate, we learn, we adjust when appropriate, and we continue. Because ultimately the goal isn't to reach a place where nobody criticizes you. The goal is to reach a place where criticism has been put into its proper perspective. Useful criticism becomes instruction. Uninformed criticism becomes dismissed. Malicious criticism is irrelevant. And none of them get to decide what you do with your life. So stay active, become visible, become successful, become better. And when criticism inevitably arrives, don't ask, how do I make everyone approve of me? Ask, is there anything useful here? And if there is, how can I use it to become even better? Then let's get back to work. That's not ignoring criticism. That's mastering our response to it. And that is what we look at as the no cry zone way. Thanks for joining me. Reach out with questions and comments at media at upwardsbest.com. Tell us how we're doing and tell us how you're doing. Make sure you grab yourself another fantastic week. I know there are plenty still available. See you next time.

SPEAKER_03 20:21

You will never be successful. Yeah, that's what they said. Oh, it would be good. Just stop.