How can I NOT take it personally?
Posted: Friday, November 19, 2010
by Douglas Cartwright
Living Words Coaching and Training
I think, at the heart of much of our lack of achievement is the fear of being attacked at a personal level. I mean, the fear that somehow the criticism that comes from another will get through to ME, the fundamental ‘I’, the essence of who I am.
If you understand what I am talking about when I say “the criticism seems to go right through me, past all my defences, and hits me personally then this article is for you. If you fear that somehow YOU will be hurt then read on.
“..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; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who actually strives to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he 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, 26 th American President
I predict that most of you reading these articles want to actually be “in the arena" you actually want to “spend yourself in a worthy cause" and never have a place “with those cold and timid souls that know neither victory or defeat." Am I talking to the right people?
Now, my journey will be different to yours and I daresay you won’t agree with everything I write. In fact, I know you won’t! But I hope that some of what I have learned will be useful for you, and your clients if you have them.
I’ll start up front by saying that I believe the issue of removing one’s self-esteem from the ‘arena of life’ IS one of the THE two most important actions you can take in order to become “the man (or woman) in the arena" and stay there without running for the door!
There’s a saying “If you stick your head above the crowd, people will shoot at you". But I would like to put several ideas to you:
- What actually is YOU?
- Why do you let others shoot at it?
The first question is one that philosophers have argued about for centuries. In recent years the computer metaphor “ghost in the machine" has become popular – it refers to the part of your organic ‘machine’ that is self-aware - the consciousness that seems to be able to think about all other aspects of your self.
Even in this quote from the Psalms, King David (of David and Goliath fame) over 3000 years ago shows that men understood there was a higher part of them:
5 Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Psalm 42:5
I think the ‘I’ part of David who is talking to his soul (not the glowing light of Harry Potter mythos but the thoughts, will, emotions etc of a person that help him communicate with himself and others) is the quintessential ME which may be a little strange to hear until I explain.
My ‘self’ is constructed over the years from ideas, experiences, perspectives from other people and stuff I have worked out for myself. It’s a construct.
Everyone has to develop some kind of sense of self, it’s inherent – but if you are born in China you’ll probably develop a concept of self based on Chinese culture and the same process applies in South America, and everywhere – but self is a set of learned concepts which we act out – and it’s malleable, which is why CBT, NLP and various other methods can be so effective in making changes to the self-concept
But am I just my learned concept of self, and if not, is there is some part of me that is unchanging, and beyond earthly value? I refer to it as the divine spark, the life that God imparted to us at creation:
“…the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."
Genesis 2:7
So the life that is in me is the life that comes from God, and as God cannot be valued ( because He is beyond value ) that means the life in me is beyond value as well!
Why is this important?
This helps me to remove the most valuable aspect of me out of the range of criticism – can’t touch this! Hammer time!
No-one can make a judgement that sticks on me if God made me, because He is my ultimate authority and judge of value - not another person.
Another part of the solution is to realise that the core of you is unknowable by others, that is, that you are far too complicated to accept a single callous judgement about your worth as being authoritative . If someone says you are unlovable, are they actually qualified to make a judgement about the complete you? They know everything about you, eh?
“For who among men know s the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him?"
1 Corinthians 2:11
There is far more to you than just your behaviour, right? In fact, our yearning to be known by other people proves that there is much about us to know. After all, how many women say to their men “you just don’t understand me" (grin).
My wife has an excellent strategy for dealing with criticism. Essentially, she has developed a mindset that is like aikido – she takes the criticism and uses it to work out how she can relate to that person with compassion.
She believes her central self is not involved because only God knows her and He determines her values; and she assumes that if people want to be harsh to her they are responding to their own limited understanding of her , not the real and actual her.
She says “the objection to me is in them , not me" and she doesn’t assume that the person has the authority to judge her. So the criticism does not go right through her, she holds it and tries to think about where the person is coming from, and what would be a helpful way to respond. She will respond to criticisms about thought and behaviour but not worth.
I think she uses the Neurosemantics presupposition (yes, other disciplines as well as NLP have presuppositions!) “the frame is the problem, not the person".
A frame, in case you are unsure, is cognitive psychology short-hand for ‘frame of reference" and refers to the interpretations we put around memories of events, or ideas we have about the world.
Thus, your framing-of-reference for ‘love’ will be different to mine.
When I ask you to think of ‘fire’ I am certain you have different memories and feelings about it to me. You might picture campfires and fireworks, I picture a gas fire.
Anyway, the idea behind the principle is that no matter how a person thinks and behaves (frames) THEY (the inherently valuable them) are not inherently problematic, it is the way they think.
Now, I appreciate that most of us don’t think that way. If ‘Jeff’ steals money from me then ‘Jeff’ is a thief and a jerk, right?
In common language terms this would be acceptable.
If you want to mature in your thinking you separate the worth of Jeff (so Jeff does not completely equal the concept of thief and jerk) from his actions. You may not like what he did, you may not be friends with him anymore, you may report him to the police. But you do not denigrate his value as a human being.
This last bit is the bit that many people find almost too difficult to manage. Why this is I am not 100% sure but part of it is certainly a function of language as English contains lots of “to be" verbs which make the Jeff = (is a ) jerk equation in our heads. And our minds seek to reinforce what we already believe…
I wonder if the other is to do with more spiritual and philosophical issues of human value missing in our society at large.
I don’t have any inherent problems with capitalism at this point but I know that in the past, when I have been out of work for long periods, I was tempted to feel like my lack of contribution MEANT I was not valuable. So the formula for self-worth there would have been ‘not producing = not valuable’.
I’ve been a Christian for 14 years and I still have to work at this – but one of the biggest steps forward in valuing myself came from realising how God valued me so much He sent His Son to atone for my sins.
I believe I am valuable because God created me, and designated me worth the price of the death of His Son on the cross, and “whilst we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
So my worth is not based on anything I did (or do). This gives me the ability to set my worth as unconditional and not based on performance.
Now, I would like it if you reached the same conclusions in life, but as I said you don’t have to agree with me. As I said, this is how I reached the place where I can separate esteem from doing, and criticism.
The personal development question here is: How are you going to separate YOU from any criticism? How are you going to make sure criticism doesn’t even touch that sense of you?
What will happen when you wake up tomorrow, free from any fear of criticism, and knowing that your unleashing is happening, here, now?
I created the Personal PowerPack to help with this: www.personal-powerpack.com as it will help you create higher frames of self-esteeming, and the ownership of your personal powers: thinking-feeling-speaking and behaving. These were created by L.Michael Hall from the field of Neurosemantics and they are very powerful.
To your highest and best
Doug Cartwright
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)I think when you stick your head above the crowd, people will shoot at you. But it's only through that experience that you're forced to find the real you, the one that is unassailable, so that their shooting doesn't demolish you.
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