Embrace The Criticism!

Criticism is a one of those words that seems to cut most people like a knife. Although the knife doesn’t seem as sharp when we put the word “constructive” in front of the word criticism, none-the-less the word still seems to pierce.

When I was growing up my mom would always tell me: “Son, you can’t control or worry about what other people say or think… you can only control what you say and what you do.”  Later on in life, as a young leader I had a mentor that would always say “If you’re doing something worthy of people taking shots at you, you better believe they will.  I would much rather have a leader that people don’t always understand and who are occasionally criticized, than a “leader” that no one ever talks about and likes to play it safe.”   I’ve  also heard a similar leadership phrase, “If you want to find the leader, look for the one with the arrow in their back!”

I tend to view criticism as neutral… “It Is What It Is!”  I prefer to “Eat The Meat and Spit Out The Bones!”  If you don’t want to be criticized, I have some advice for you: “Say Nothing, Do Nothing & Be Nothing!” Find someone who has blazed a trail and you’ll find someone who has weathered a trail of criticism. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”   If you follow Emerson’s line of thought, be ready for the critics because Trailblazers Will Be Criticized!  Trailblazers must throw on their criticism embracing jackets daily and Embrace The Criticism!

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done 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 and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows 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 know neither victory nor defeat.” ~Theodore Roosevelt

Don’t find yourself hanging around in a place with those “Cold and Timid Souls” choose to Embrace The Criticism!

Why are there so many critics and why are so many people unwilling to Embrace The Criticism?