How To Handle Criticism (Even If It Feels Personal)

Why Criticism Feels Personal and How to Handle It There's a reason one sentence of criticism from your boss can ruin your entire week. Because your brain doesn't just hear you missed the mark, it hears if you keep missing the mark, you're gonna lose your job and we are gonna fire you. So today, I'm going to walk you through 4 mistakes almost everyone makes when responding to criticism, and then I'll show you the filter that I use to decide what to take in, what to clarify, and what to let go of. I've spent the last 15 years coaching millions of people around the world to communicate better, and the one thing that holds them back is their inability to handle criticism and feedback in a constructive way, because many wonderful opportunities for growth they actually arrive disguised as criticism. If you've never learned how to handle this, you'll spend your entire life rejecting the very type of feedback that could have changed your life. Don't Slam the Door on the Gift of Growth Mistake #1 You get defensive the second criticism comes your way. When someone critiques you, it rarely feels like they're critiquing the behaviour. It feels like they're critiquing you. A lot of the time people genuinely just don't know how to give feedback in a way that's constructive. I promise you, 90% of the time the people giving you criticism, they aren't actually trying to destroy you, they're trying to help you improve. They just never learned how to do it well. And because most people suck at giving feedback, the criticism comes across and feels like an attack, but it's actually just information that you can actually use to get better. I learned this the hard way. My cousin Hong was one of the best magicians and slot of hand art that I knew. And every single time I showed him a new card routine, oh, try that again, not editing whatsoever. That was just all real. That was real magic. But every single time I would show my cousin a piece of slot of hand, a new card routine that I've learned, he would always say things like, what's your angles? Vim. Everyone on your left can see how you did the trick. You flash the second card. Looking back, he was just trying to help me, but at the time I got super offended. I wasn't hearing any of the feedback. I was just hearing you're not good enough then. So I would defend myself and I'll explain myself. And then I was just thinking he was being overly critical of me. And I actually don't need this anymore. OK, Peter, that's the wrong edit Quit, quit. Can we just do that again, please? And that's what I'm talking about. And because I reacted so badly to the feedback my cousin Hu was giving me, eventually he stopped giving me feedback completely. And think about that for a second. The person who was most qualified to help me improve, he stopped helping me because I trained him to stop because of my inability to receive feedback. So for about a year after that, I kept practising on my own without getting any feedback from anybody. And then I started to perform for real people, for audiences. And then they'll start to say things to me like, oh, then I saw the card in your hand. Wait, it went into the other hand. Oh, I saw you palm it. And then it hit me. My cousin Hung wasn't trying to make me feel bad when he was giving me the feedback, he was actually trying to help me and save me from those exact moments. If someone cares about you enough to hand you the gift of growth, don't slam the door on it because it arrives in bad packaging. Because if you keep slamming the door, you train the people around you to stop sharing anything useful. Your friends stop being honest with you, the team stops raising the issues that they feel inside, your mentor holds back when giving you feedback, and your manager softens everything until it becomes is pointless and meaningless. And now you can't see your blind spots anymore that are preventing you from growing. That's what happens when everyone around you has been trained to protect your feelings instead of telling you the truth. Evaluate the Source: Who is This Criticism From? Now of course not all criticism comes from a good place, which leads me to mistake #2 you treat all criticism the same. I learned this one the hard way too. Unfortunately for me, I started creating content back in 2009. I loved more than anything making mini short films, even appeared in the background as an extra of one of my favorite Youtubers here on YouTube, Wong through productions. And after I uploaded my first few short films on my YouTube channel, I got a wave of hate comments. They weren't even critiquing the story, they were critiquing and mocking the way I shot the footage, the way I looked, my appearance. And those comments made me feel extremely insecure. It made me so insecure that I actually stopped making videos with my face in them. When I started making magic videos, I decided to only show my hands, my legs, and yeah, yeah, my crotch. And that's why they called me the crotch magician. And because then they teased me about that. I then stopped creating content altogether for a good while. Looking back now, what fascinates me isn't the fact that people called me ugly, it's what I started to believe because of those comments. Somewhere along the way, I adopted the idea that only attractive and good looking people should create content. That if people thought I was ugly or you were ugly, you should stay out of the spotlight regardless of how much value you have to offer the world. Which sounds completely ridiculous, but that's what criticism can do. If you're not careful, you stop evaluating whether or not the criticism is true and you start building your whole damn life around it. After I decided to stop creating content, I remember seeing all my camera gear sit there in the corner, my lights and my microphone, and every single time I saw them. It really heard because they weren't reminders of my journey as a creator. There were reminders of the criticism and the meanness that existed within those comments. At that stage of my life, I didn't know how to sort the criticism properly, so I gave the comments far more weight and authority than they deserved, and it cost me three whole years. What really changed things for me was when I clicked through to the person's profile. No scope 360, eh? They have no videos on their channel, no body of work, no evidence that they have ever created anything. They were just a spectator telling those in the arena how they should be fighting. Can you see the problem here? The problem was that I was treating all criticism as if they deserved the same amount of authority. Upon realizing this, instead of asking myself is this criticism, I now ask who is this criticism coming from? Because criticism and credibility, they're not the same thing. Earlier this year, I was in Dubai and I happened to be in the same room as Mr. Beast, one of the biggest Youtubers in the world. Now if Mr. Beast looked at one of my thumbnails of my videos and said then I think you could improve the packaging and make it stronger, would I listen? Absolutely, because he's spent years studying attention audience psychology at a level that very few people on earth have done. But on the other hand, if a random user on YouTube who has an account that has an egg as its profile picture comments bro, your content sucks, that doesn't carry the same weight. Let me give you another example. I would never take content creation advice from my mum, but if Peter, my head of creative, gives me feedback on my content, I'm listening. Now, would I listen to Peter's advice on parenting? Absolutely not. Peter's a terrible father. What? Speaker 2 I don't even have kids. Speaker 1 Exactly case in point, terrible father. He doesn't even know they exist. Shameful. Do you know what else is shameful? Peter has asked me right now in this moment of the video to do a call to action to say. By the way, if you're new to my channel and you want to join me for a free 2 hour master class where I'm going to teach you how to speak with more clarity and also to stop rambling, make sure you click the link in the description or scan the QR code just on screen over here and I'll teach you how to turn your thoughts into words faster by communicating with frameworks. God damn it Peter, that's so shameful. Before we get to the next point. Oh thank you. I just needed to quickly have a sip of water. Oh just wash the shame out. I hate working with Peter. Clarify Vague Feedback to Avoid Negative Self-Talk Mistake #3 you let vague criticism write the story in your head. So. Speaker 2 What do you think then? Speaker 1 No, it's not good, Peter. I'm just not feeling the vibe. Speaker 3 Oh man, I knew he never liked me. He probably regrets hiring me. Now he has to think about firing me but he just doesn't know how to say it. So then he just criticizes my edits so I can get the picture without him actually saying it. Speaker 1 In that situation, when I gave Peter feedback, I was being far too vague. And when someone receives vague criticism, instead of clarifying it, they just create a story in their heads about what it means. And they're often wrong, like Peter was wrong coming to the conclusion that he came. That's what makes vague criticism so dangerous. The comment itself is unclear, but the story that you start to build around it in your own head becomes painfully clear. It's not good, Becomes I'm not good. Now you're not responding to the feedback anymore. You're responding to the story that you created in your own head. Vague criticism gives you just enough information to feel bad, but not enough information to improve. Don't assume the first comment is the whole critique. Get curious here. Pause. Sometimes if you just leave a little bit of silence, the other person will naturally explain what they mean and give you more context. And if they don't, you take control. Ask them a question that turns the criticism or the vague criticism into specific information. For example, if somebody's being vague, you can just ask, hey, when you said that, what did you specifically mean? Because the very moment you ask for clarity, one of two things will happen. Either the person gets really specific and gives you something useful, or you realize they were only one layer deep and they had nothing to add. That one question protects you from building a whole negative identity around feedback that was never fully formed in the 1st place. Let me show you the 2 examples I'm talking about. So. Speaker 2 What do you think? Speaker 1 Pete, I'm just not feeling the vibe. Speaker 2 When you say vibe, what do you mean? Speaker 1 Well, I was just bored. She's just making conversation. I was only one layer deep scenario, just not really feeling the vibe. Peter, Yeah. Speaker 2 When you say vibe, what do you mean by that? Speaker 1 Well, it's kind of. The soundtrack is off. The edit's really good, brother, but I just feel like the music is a bit too slow. We need to speed up the pace. Maybe something more upbeat. Maybe something more inspiring. Speaker 2 Yeah, I love that. Thanks for the feedback. Speaker 1 That right there, That's the difference. So the next time somebody gives you vague feedback, slow it down. Ask the next clarifying question. Make sure the feedback earns its meaning. And you know what this is? Let me curious. I want you to drop a comment down below. Let me know when somebody's given you a vague piece of feedback. And what story did you start to create around it? Maybe re examine those to see if those stories that you created even true. Leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you. Build a Better Filter, Not Thicker Skin Mistake #4 You think the goal is thicker skin. It might sound like the goal is to build thicker skin when you talk about criticism and feedback, but I actually think that advice is a little bit dangerous. When people say you need thicker skin, what they actually mean is don't let the criticism affect you. If every piece of criticism feels like an attack, of course you'll start to build armor around yourself to protect yourself. You'll become harder to hurt. It kind of makes sense. But here's the issue. The same armor that keeps the attack out also keeps out the insights. A troll online says something cruel. It hits the wall. Good, it hits the armor, it did its job. But then the mentor points out a blind spot of yours and it hits the same wall. It hits the same armor. Your boss gives you something useful. Same damn armor, same damn wall. Your partner says, hey, when you do this, it makes me feel unheard. Yep, you guessed it, Same armor, same wall. And now the thing you built to protect yourself is also preventing you from growing. That's why I believe the goal isn't to build thicker skin. The goal is to use a better filter. A Simple Framework to Sort and Use Criticism And that's exactly what I want to give you right now. Step number one, pause. Don't react right away and ask yourself one question. What is 1 useful thing that I can take from this? The moment criticism hits, your body wants to defend, deflect and justify. But if you can buy yourself just 5 seconds and ask that one question, you force your brain to switch from threat into learning mode. Step #2 check the source. Has the person earned authority in this area? A mentor who's walked the path you're walking. That feedback. It deserves serious yes attention. Step 3. Is there specific feedback? If not, and it's really vague and wishy washy, ask a question to qualify it and to get specifics. Step #4 Take what's useful and let the rest pass on by. You're not building a wall that blocks everything. You're building a filter that sorts the good stuff from the bad stuff and the useless stuff. What's credible, specific, and constructive gets to come in. What's vague, unearned, and sometimes even just mean passes through you and keeps on moving straight into the you don't have to store it, you can just let it go. Criticism as a Disguised Opportunity for Life-Changing Growth Criticism, feedback, and honest conversations are so important because sometimes the people around you can see things that you cannot. And if you're willing to stay open long enough to hear the feedback and receive the criticism well, it can change the trajectory of your life. Every opportunity for growth often arrives disguised as criticism, and if you learn how to recognise it, filter it, and then use it, you'll gain access to lessons that most people spend their entire lives looking for. I'll see you in the next video.