Denying Feedback

I think we all find it difficult to take direct criticism well, especially if it’s related to one’s pride. An easy concept to understand but a difficult one to swallow is crushing one’s own ego. We like to protect our egos and inflate them to their fullest, in a strange attempt to protect ourselves. As confidence and experience grows, egos are no longer needed to protect one’s self.

It’s difficult to pass on confidence and experience. We all know it’s easier to gain these things first hand than it is internalize something that begins externally. There are innumerable self help books, videos on YouTube, stories and reels. There’s nothing like burning your hand on a stove to teach you it is hot.

In college, a friend of mine taught me this analogy. He said, “Some times you just have to let your friend burn themselves on the stove. In fact, if you tell them not to do it, not only will they do it, they’ll resent you.”

This was tough for me to swallow. I grew up with Asian immigrant parents. I got an ear-full for everything. Leaving the lights on, talking on the phone for too long, not finishing my meal, not getting good enough grades. I’m 32 years old and I don’t think it really ended, I just moved away and stopped talking to them as much. What they instilled in me was the never ending thought that there was something wrong, that there was something to be done about it. This is kind of a great thing for a problem solver. It’s not so great in that humans are naturally inclined to find patterns, even when one doesn’t exist. Oops, I’ll just solve a problem that isn’t really a problem…

It’s easy to think of feedback for others, but conversely it is terribly difficult to think of feedback for ourselves. Many times we take it to the wrong degree, persecuting ourselves for our most self-hated traits while not addressing the true underlying pain points. I wrote previously that we are able to see the world so clearly yet we are unable to see ourselves. This remains true with feedback and becomes ever so more important in that the feedback we receive from others is the only social mirror we truly have.

This makes feedback such a conundrum. We don’t like hearing things from others if we are insecure about something, so we place our ego in front of it to shield ourselves. Our ego blinds us from not only the feedback people are attempting to give us, but also to our own experiences, causing us to trust our ego over our experiences. Until we gain enough experience that our ego may subside, we cannot perceive our experiences unfiltered. Combine that with the fact that most people, a vast majority of people, are too polite or unconcerned about others that they will never offer feedback in the first place. It takes time, energy, and thoughtfulness to provide feedback to someone. Why would someone take that time, energy, and thoughtfulness only to have it rejected instantly by someone’s ego?

We don’t like taking feedback. People don’t like giving feedback. What is all the point?

As someone who has been and is still terrible at taking feedback, what I’ve learned is that not every point of feedback needs to be addressed, but more-so heard. When we get a lot of information it comes to us as static and the important parts require parsing. It is easy to become overwhelmed by static, it is easy to have emotional responses to unpleasant news, and it’s easy to dismiss information that is not easily registerable.

People who are good at taking feedback know that not everything may be addressed and not every solution presented is appropriate. They know that the people who bother to leave any feedback at all are fans of it enough that they want to see it improve. A big mistake I made when taking feedback was believing that people were antagonizing or positioning themselves against my beliefs or ideas. The best way to see it is by seeing it as a multi-pronged attack together on the same goal. Not everyone has the same experiences or knowledge, so of course there are different approaches. The important thing to ask one’s self when hearing feedback is what is the goal of the feedback? Even if the feedback makes no sense at all, the goal is almost always to make it better. Take the kind sentiment and place it kindly wherever it belongs, at the forefront of priorities or on the backburner.

The easiest thing a person receiving feedback can say is, “I’ll think about it.”

The hardest thing a person giving feedback can say is, “I know what it’s like.”