Feedback Thoughts

Like many people, I have struggled with receiving feedback. I took any negative feedback on my work as a direct attack on me as a person. However, I brushed off any positive input to the side. I never saw it as a compliment to me as a person. This double-standard affected me, and it was only later that I realized that my merits are just as significant to pay attention to as my faults. The two articles I read reinforced this thought-process.

One of the articles I read was Sabina Nawaz's article, "Silence the Critical Voices in Your Head." Nawaz brought up that it is crucial to write down both positive and negative feedback, so we know what we need to continue as well as what we need to change. As it is now, we give ourselves too little credit for our merits. We brush off compliments without realizing that every skill we have contributes. To counteract this thought, we need to focus more on positive feedback and turn those compliments into improvement working tools.

John Spencer's article, "Seven Ways to Crush Self-Doubt in Creative Work," also brought up how the way we shrink from making mistakes is unnatural. If babies were self-conscious of how clumsy they are compared to adults, functional humans would cease to exist. We need to shift from the thought process that the worst thing we can do is make a mistake or turn in an imperfect project. The worst thing we can do is nothing. While this mindset is hard to grasp with the standardized testing and continual grading, we need to remind ourselves that by comparing ourselves to others, we are only hindering ourselves.

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