“Underneath all his preoccupations with sex, society, religion, etc. (all the staple abstractions that allow the forebrain to chatter) there is, quite simply, a man tortured beyond endurance by the lack of tenderness in the world.” — Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet
“You’re not born uninteresting. But it’s entirely possible you’ve persuaded yourself to be so frightened of the consequences that you no longer have the passion, the generosity or the guts to be interesting any longer.” — Seth Godin, Are you interesting?
“Would you have a friend who talks to you the way you talk to yourself?” — Callie Khouri, Commencement Address, Sweet Briar College (22 May 1994)
Criticism (Receiving) and Attitude
Criticism:
Don’t take it personally.
Remember the fundamental attribution error.
Now ask yourself, “why are they criticizing?”
All criticism contains at least a grain of truth.
“It’s my thing” is not something to have an attitude about. — manager-tools newsletter.
Accepting responsibility for both the positive and the negative equals integrity.
Never let criticism fill you with doubt.
Listen, don’t interrupt. Interrupting is being closed to what the other is saying.
The critic’s best friend — your lizard brain.
Related:
Fundamental attribution error (wikipedia.org)
Quote of the Day (2016-03-11)
“Figuring out how to deal with the noise in your head is probably faster and cheaper than changing the outside world.” — Seth Godin, It’s not all in your head
Contemplating Seth Godin‘s post Association, working out why it resonated, I put it into my words:
Your ideas come from the things you think and talk about. Who you are talking with affects the subjects of your conversations. Change your ideas by changing the people you are talking with.
What are your worst conversations? The ones with yourself!
The lizard brain is afraid of public conversations and thrives in the private conversations with yourself. The more conversations you have with yourself, the more influence the lizard brain has on our ideas.
Talk more to others, less to yourself and change your ideas.
There is a French saying: “il vaut mieux avoirs des remords que des regrets”. This loosely translates to: “it is better to be remorseful than to have regrets”. It is about choosing to do something rather than regretting not having tried.
The action may or may not turn out be right thing to do. If it was the wrong thing to do you may feel some pain or sorrow about the act.
If you did nothing, you will regret it not having tried.
The difference: Remorse you can get over, regret will stay with you forever. Remorse can torture your conscience, regrets attack your ego.
When the lizard brain is telling you better safe than sorry, ask him: Sorry enough to live with the damage to my ego?
Dictionary.com” defines ego as “the “I” or self of any person; a person as thinking, feeling, and willing, and distinguishing itself from the selves of others and from objects of its thought.”
Do I want to live in my head?
The psychoanalytic definition given is “the part of the psychic apparatus that experiences and reacts to the outside world and thus mediates between the primitive drives of the id and the demands of the social and physical environment.”
It’s starting to sound like “better safe than sorry” is about the id, the lizard brain, trying to kill off the ego.
If it is a sorry I can live with, then safe isn’t better than sorry.
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