If You aren’t Getting Criticized, It’s Time to Look in the Mirror

I mean it. Criticism is so cheap, easy, and readily available in today’s world, how could it be that you couldn’t be getting any? It could only be that you are doing what everyone else wants you to do.

Ouch. Yes. I said that.

Here’s the deal. Anything, and I do mean ANYTHING that you do that is remotely outside of the box that someone else has put THEMSELVES in, is going to get you criticized. This is a truth in general. There are lots of folks, and I daresay it represents the statistical majority, who are not very happy with much in their life. This applies to many corners of their life. The majority is not healthy, not happy in their work, not happy in their relationships, not happy with their lot in life, and the list goes on.

All of us have been in one or all of these unhappy places in our life at some point. That’s the nature of life. The difference is “what do we each do about it?” For a majority of folks, the answer is nada, zippo, nothing. And therefor, they are going to be quite quick to point out how you must be an idiot to be doing something different, because that is way easier than looking in a mirror and saying, “I must be an idiot.”

Theodore Roosevelt famously said:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

My Mission is To Help You Live Your Richest Life Possible

I want you getting criticized for going after your dream, for being a leader, for working hard to improve yourself, for being a freak about your health, for forgoing a day of ____ with friends because you are spending that time with the people that love you the most on the planet. I want you in the arena. Because THAT is where life is.

Life is not watching the reality TV of others doing things. Life is participating. In the video below, I give you several things to consider to help you deal with how the criticism by others makes you feel.

I am a big fan of using criticism to gauge myself. Not necessarily relative to applying it to myself, but to monitor if I am in action enough. I have gone through many harrowingly intense times of massive criticism in my life. People criticized my ideas, business ventures, the way I parented, my lifestyle pursuits, my intelligence, my success, my failures, my writing, my speaking, the way I dress, you name it and I have been criticized for it.

I just kept on going. And guess what? After a while, when “they” noticed that their meaningless criticisms had no visible impact (when I was younger, being highly sensitive by nature, it REALLY hurt me, but I never let it be seen), they got quiet. And then as life wore on and the aggregate result of my “out of the box” choices became the visible result of my life…they shut up completely. And by the way, the “Doers” I hang around, all have the same story, I’m just one of many who allowed our life to speak and the critic to quietly have a dinner of their own words.

We would all still be living in caves and beating rocks together for music if the critics voice mattered. Everything around you, in all directions, that was created by the ideas of the human mind, was criticized.

Move forward. Let the criticism be proof that you are on the right track. Og Mandino said “I will live this day as if it is my last.” If it was your last, do you think you would bother to listen to some inane criticism?

Make sure to watch the video because it has some good stuff in it. And I bet you know a few people who are stepping out and trying to make something happen in some area of their life right now. Perhaps sharing this with them might help a little.

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