On March 11, 2011, the worst earthquake in Japan’s history, despite killing 16,000 people, left most of the medium and high rise modern buildings, intact. This was so because the Teflon foundation pads, that separated these buildings from their foundations, allowed the walls to slide over them.
Most humans get shaken by disagreements, negative judgments and criticisms the way earthquakes shake the buildings. However, there is a difference. While earthquakes serve no positive purpose for the buildings, disagreements, judgments and criticisms offer us opportunities to learn, improve and grow. This brings us to a universal human dilemma: while we need these criticisms for our growth, we cannot help but resist them because, emotionally and psychologically, they feel like mini-earthquakes.
Criticisms must be expressed because we must own our responsibilities towards those we are responsible for. They must be received, too, because we need these for our growth—more so, because we often cannot see some of our wrongs with our own eyes. Still, most of us feel guilty while offering criticisms and victimised while receiving these. That is why we tend to play safe—we mix with like-minded people, and hold the same stale, superficial and mutually flattering conversations.
“A ship is safest in the harbour, but that is not what ships are built for.”
—John A Shedd
We feel good when we are agreed with or appreciated—it releases dopamine. Dopamine is a feel-good neurotransmitter that is also released when we laugh, earn money, get promoted, enjoy our favourite food, receive a ‘like’ on Facebook, achieve a goal, have sex or indulge in our favourite addiction.
On the other hand, when we are criticised, it makes our brain secrete cortisol—the very same stress hormone that our ancestors’ brains released every time a leopard pounced upon them, a lion chased them or their tribe ostracised them. It provided them with the momentary extra energy they needed to fight or flight and thereby helped our species survive in those times.
However, what served a meaningful purpose then has become a liability now: our unchanged body chemistry cannot help but overreact even to a criticism as it would to a leopard pouncing upon us.
Unless we train ourselves to do otherwise when someone criticises us, we instinctually overinterpret the challenge and feel threatened in the following four ways:
• We feel belittled. It feels as if someone deliberately beheaded us to look taller than us.
• It threatens our behavioural freedom. Most of us would like to do a “wrong” that comes naturally to us than a “right” that is being imposed on us.
• It threatens our relationship with our critic and our possibility of receiving what we are dependent on him/her for.
• It tends to take away our trust in other people and life because criticism, almost always, appears unfair to us. According to a “mere exposure principle” in psychology, whatever we have heard or done, more often, appears correct, important and fair to us. And criticisms would not have been needed if they were not about perspectives obscured from our awareness.
The good news is that all the above threats come into being only because of our inability to do just one thing: separate who we are from how we behave. To separate these two, we can do the following three things:
1. Repeatedly imagine yourself to be the human equivalent of all those Japanese buildings—clearly divided into who you are (the foundation) and how you behave (the building). Whenever what you believe, say or do is attacked by an earthquake of criticism, don’t let who you are to get involved. Instead, learn to let the attacked behaviour slide freely and go wherever your honest introspection and the new realisation emerging from it would take it.
2. Actively seek and receive feedback—especially the kind that will help you improve. If you watch the same comedy movie repeatedly, it will lose all humour for you. Similarly, when sought voluntarily and received like a gift, repeatedly, your relationship with criticism will undergo a change: you will perceive it as a loyal friend instead of a leopard pouncing upon you.
3. Identify and overcome your tendency to make the following presumptions as these are the symptoms of the stress response:
• Your critic is a villain, and you are his helpless victim. (Instead, even if difficult, always begin by presuming a positive intent behind the criticism).
• Your critic is taking away your freedom to be yourself. (Remind yourself that a criticism always leaves you with your freedom to do whatever you choose to do with it).
Criticism, depending on how we perceive it and what we choose to do with it, can make us bitter or better.
Now that you know how to do it, practice choosing better over bitter. Always!
Anil Bhatnagar is a corporate trainer, motivational speaker and the author of The Five Wise Monkeys of
Communication and several other books.
thrive.ab@gmail.com