QUESTION OF THE DAY: HOW DO YOU COPE WITH CRITICISM? A reader asked me this que…
QUESTION OF THE DAY: HOW DO YOU COPE WITH CRITICISM?
A reader asked me this question today, and I thought I would re-post what I wrote about this last year… hope it's helpful!
Also, I want to open up this question for a general discussion — so by all means, please share your own thoughts and wisdom on the subject, OK?
As for me, it depends on whether the criticism is professional or personal.
I have a much thicker skin when it comes to professional criticism than personal criticism. I've always understood that it's impossible (and perhaps even unfair) to put something out in the world without allowing other people to have opinions about it. If I get to speak publicly, in other words, then they get to speak publicly, too. Sometimes people's reaction to my work will be warm, sometimes it will be ambivalent, sometimes it will be dismissive, sometimes it will be positively hateful. And thanks to the magic of the Internet, I CAN FIND OUT WHAT EVERYONE IN THE WORLD THINKS OF ME AT ANY TIME OF DAY! (Which you must never do, by the way, unless you are deeply invested in making yourself terribly unhappy.)
I keep on doing my work, anyhow despite criticism. And I've been on the business end of some really majestic denigration over the years, too. Especially after "Eat Pray Love". But I keep writing. I do my work not from a place of "I'll show those bastards!" but from a personal certainty that I have a job to do, and that I must stick with it. We all have a job in life; writing books happens to mine. It's nothing personal; it's just true. Whatever happens to those books after I publish them is none of my business. People can jump up and down on my books all day, but I still have to make the things. Also, I know this: My critics will write their angry words about me, publish those angry words, tuck their children into bed, have a glass of wine, watch TV and go to sleep…and then never really think about me again. So I shouldn't dwell on them, either. It's just an inhale and an exhale — a natural part of the human process — and then it's done.
Lastly, as I alway say, "If people don't like what I've written, they can go write their own f**king books."
Thus: ONWARD.
As for personal criticism, though? That's harder. The more intimately I know and love you, the more your criticism will hurt me — and the worse my reaction will be to it, I am sorry to say. If you are a loved one of mine, your criticism will sometimes shut me down, sometimes it will enrage me, sometimes it will make me close my heart to you, sometimes it will cause me to rush to my own defense — perhaps even hysterically and irrationally. I wish to do better in this regard, and I'm always looking to learn how.
My best teacher of recent years has been my friend Rayya Elias (Elizabeth Gilbert - The Official Website | ElizabethGilbert.com.
