Mark McGuinness - Resilience: Facing Down Rejection (14 page)

In an interview, Cohen told the story of being visited by Roshi at the recording studio during the seventies. The music press critics were writing him off as ‘an old depressive drone peddling suicide notes.’ When the singer asked his teacher what he thought of the music, Roshi replied:

“Leonard, you should sing more sad.”

While the critics wanted him to tone it down and deliver something more upbeat, Roshi evidently felt Cohen needed to go in the
opposite
direction—to stop holding back, forget about people’s expectations, and fully surrender himself to the sadness.

If Cohen had listened to the critics he would have compromised his art and disappointed his fans. No, his work isn’t to everyone’s taste, but trying to please everyone is a recipe for disaster for an artist. Or for anyone else who wants to do something truly original. No wonder Cohen said this was the best advice he ever received.

You’re better off doing nothing than doing something bland. Sometimes it’s important—even fun! —to annoy certain people, and have them hate your work. A nice side effect of this kind of criticism is that your fans will love you all the more, and rush to your defense when they see you being attacked.

Action criticism vs. FYI criticism

So how do you decide whether to ignore criticism or do something about it? One way is to divide it into
action criticism
and
FYI criticism
.

Action criticism

This is from someone who is directly involved in your work, or whose opinion you take seriously—such as a boss, collaborator, client, teacher, or mentor. When they give you feedback, they expect you to do something about it—either for your benefit (in the case of a teacher or mentor) or theirs (a client) or for everyone’s (boss/collaborator).

As long as you’re in touch with these people, you need to pay close attention to their criticism and respond to it. You don’t necessarily have to do what they want, but you need to at least engage them in dialogue.

If you find their criticism helpful (even if it’s not always comfortable) let them know. If you don’t find their criticism helpful, you have a choice to make—either get them to change (see
Chapter 37
) or stop working with them.

FYI criticism

‘FYI’ means ‘For Your Information’—no action required. On an email or memo, it lets you know you are not expected to respond, just to read and take note of the contents.

Here I’m using it in a special sense, to refer to criticism from anyone whose opinion you are at liberty to ignore. You don’t have a working or teaching relationship with this person. They are a reviewer, academic critic, blogger, commenter on your blog or Facebook page. FYI criticism includes praise and blame—the glowing review as well as the snarky blog comment.

I’m calling it FYI criticism from
your
point of view. Maybe they expect a response, but you don’t have to reply. Sometimes they will be rude or aggressive in order to provoke a response—in which case you may feel less like responding.

You don’t even have to listen to this kind of criticism. At a certain point in his career, P.G. Wodehouse gave up his cuttings agency—who scoured the press and sent him reviews and other references to him and his work—because he found it a distraction from his writing. Blogger Leo Babauta switched off the popular comments section of his blog at Zenhabits.net for the same reason—to allow him to focus on his writing.

Your next steps:

1. Next time you receive a piece of criticism, stop and ask yourself whether it’s action criticism or FYI criticism.

2. If it’s action criticism, ask yourself whether it’s useful. If so, let the critic know and thank them—this makes it more likely they will give you more helpful criticism in future.

If not, try to get them to change their approach (
Chapter 37
will help you do this). If they refuse to change, ask yourself whether you really need to work with this person.

3. If it’s FYI criticism and you find it interesting or useful, take what you can from it. If you don’t find it useful, ignore it. If it descends into personal abuse, see
Chapter 36
for how to deal with it.

If you find yourself being distracted by a lot of unhelpful FYI criticism from one particular source—for example, an online forum or a particular journalist—cut that source out of your life. You have more important things to spend your energy on.

Note:

Leonard Cohen interview,
Rolling Stone
, Issue 881, November 2001

29. Who do they think they are?

When you’re faced with criticism, it’s easy to take it at face value. But as Leonard Cohen’s story shows us,
who is talking
is at least as important as what they are saying.

You might not take kindly to an armchair tennis player giving you advice about your backhand, but if the same words came out of the mouth of a grand slam champion, you’d be all ears, however brutal their assessment.

So before deciding what to do about a piece of criticism, always consider where it’s coming from. Here are some of the usual sources:

Haters and trolls

These people get a kick out of making nasty, offensive, and abusive comments. Many of them don’t have the guts to criticize you to your face, so they are particularly common on the internet, where they are known as
trolls
. They are a tiny minority, but a vocal one.

It’s generally best to ignore them. I’ve occasionally received an embarrassed apology when I’ve replied to an abusive comment or email, but most of them aren’t interested in dialogue. If they persist see
Chapter 36
for how to deal with them.

If it helps, look on it as a positive sign that you’re attracting enough attention for the haters to notice you and get annoyed. Trying to avoid upsetting anyone is a recipe for mediocrity.

The peanut gallery

This is the term my friend Sonia Simone uses for all the people who have an opinion on your work, but who are irrelevant to your goals. They include the nit-pickers and ‘yes-butters’ who will always find a flaw in your argument, and the well-intentioned nice people who keep asking you to do something different, even though you’re not remotely interested in doing it.

You can safely ignore these people too. Be polite, and make a brief reply if you want to, but don’t take them too seriously. And don’t get sidetracked into playing their game.

The public

I’m not a fan of Henry James’s novels, but even I had to feel sorry for him when I heard that story about him being booed off stage by the public at the premiere of one of his plays. There’s no humiliation like a public humiliation.

How seriously you take the public’s opinion will depend on what business you’re in. If you’re the editor of a national newspaper, or commissioning a piece of public art, you will probably pay more attention to it than if you’re an avant-garde novelist, or a creator of fine art that only the richest of the rich can afford. If you’re in a punk band, it would be downright embarrassing to discover everybody and their grandmother tapping their feet and singing along to your songs.

So forget ‘the public’ and decide who
your
public is. Once you know who they are, then you can start worrying about what they think of you.

The professional critics

These are the people whose job it is to critique the work and careers of performers in their field. Traditionally they have been newspaper reviewers, literary critics, academics, and TV or radio pundits. These days they are just as likely to be bloggers and social media power users.

There are basically two kinds of professional critic: the ones who ‘get’ what you’re trying to do; and the ones who don’t. Pay more attention to the former than the latter. And as we saw in the last chapter, the sharper your own critical thinking skills, the more confident you will be in assessing the judgment of professional critics.

But don’t be too quick to criticize the critics. Sometimes they tell us just what we need to hear, even if we don’t want to hear it.

Your peers

The obvious thing to watch out for here is rivalry. Are they delivering constructive criticism, or trying to take you down a peg or two? Often it’s a bit of both. And maybe that’s no bad thing—creative tensions have been at the heart of many artistic partnerships and friendships (Wordsworth and Coleridge, Kahlo and Rivera, Lennon and McCartney).

And remember, there is one thing your peers can offer you that no one else can—the perspective of someone in a situation very similar to yours.

Your mentor(s)

A mentor is an experienced pro who shares what he or she has learned. Roshi, Yoda, and Mr Miyagi are classic mentors. If you’re lucky enough to have a mentor who knows you well enough to make an informed judgment about your work, and who cares enough to tell you where you need to improve, then you owe it to them—and to yourself—to listen.

Tennis player Andy Murray had been teetering on the brink of major tournament success for years, but it was not until he hired veteran champion Ivan Lendl as his coach that he won the Olympic Gold Medal and US Open in quick succession. Murray had the talent and stamina to get within touching distance of a major trophy—but he credited his mentor with helping him reach out and seize it.

Mentors are not infallible, and sometimes you reach the point where you’ve outgrown them. But it often pays to give them the benefit of the doubt, and consider their criticisms carefully instead of dismissing them. (Just ask Darth Vader.)

Your next steps:

Next time you encounter criticism, ask yourself who is speaking:

• Haters and trolls
  —ignore them. If that doesn’t work, see
  Chapter 36
  .
  
• The peanut gallery
  —ignore them. Or be polite but don’t take them seriously.
  
• The public
  —firstly, separate the general public from
  your
  public (your fans and/or potential customers). Ignore the former; listen to the latter, even if you don’t always do what they want.
  
• Professional critics
  —firstly, separate the ones who ‘get’ what you are trying to do from the ones who don’t. Feel free to ignore the latter. Analyze the former’s words carefully, to see whether there’s anything you can learn from them.
  
• Your peers
  —firstly, try to distinguish between rivalry and genuine criticism. Secondly, ask yourself whether they have a point, and what you can learn from them.
  
• Your mentor(s)
  —listen carefully to what they say and consider it over time. If it’s not clear, ask them to explain further. When in doubt, give them the benefit of the doubt.
  

Note:

For Sonia Simone’s take on the ‘peanut gallery’ see:
http://www.copyblogger.com/smart-people-peanut-gallery/

30. Your harshest critic

You know who I mean.

Typically, your harshest critic is not the one who gives you a bad review, or leaves a snarky comment online, or heckles during a presentation, or delivers a scathing put-down in a meeting. It’s a lot closer to home than that. These critics can only really touch a nerve when they say something you are already saying to yourself.

Or to put it another way, they chime in with your Inner Critic.

If you don’t pay attention to what is happening here, you will be at the mercy of your Inner Critic—and the external critics who somehow manage to channel it—for the rest of your life. But if you recognize the presence of your Inner Critic, and find a way of dealing with it, you will become far more resilient.

The most important thing to understand here is that
your Inner Critic is not telling the ultimate truth about you
. It’s just a small part of you, giving you a highly selective and distorted account of yourself.

But the Inner Critic is cunning. There is usually a grain of truth in its criticisms, which it uses to convince you of its point of view. And it does this so often, so intimately, and so persistently, that you hardly notice its presence.

Dealing with the Inner Critic is another reason to practice mindfulness every day. When you do this, and you get to know your own thoughts and feelings, you will find it easier to spot the Inner Critic going about its business. And once you see it clearly for what it is, you will find it much harder to take the Inner Critic seriously.

Your next steps:

1. Keep up your mindfulness practice. (You haven’t taken a break already have you?)

2. Make a list of your harshest critics, and the most painful pieces of criticism you have ever received.

Read through each criticism in turn, and ask yourself whether your Inner Critic habitually tells you something similar. If so, take heart—you have rumbled the Inner Critic! This is the beginning of the end of its power over you.

3. Look out for the Inner Critic. Maybe reading through the list is enough to conjure it out of the shadows. Or maybe you’ll notice it whispering in your ear the next time you find yourself having a bad day.

As soon as you notice the Inner Critic, snap into mindfulness: pay attention to your body, your breathing, and your surroundings, while keeping the Critic in your awareness. Don’t try to squash the Critic or get rid of it—it will only come back stronger. This is your chance to see through it.

Do you experience the Critic’s thoughts as if you were listening to an inner voice? If so, is it male or female? In your left or right ear?

Do you have an image of the Critic in your mind’s eye? If so, notice its appearance.

Keep the Critic in your awareness, and notice that it really is just a small part of you. Recognize that what the Critic is saying is not the ultimate truth about you.