The first time a close friend took me aside to share some serious criticism was in 11th grade. She saw me making a mistake and tried to help me fix it. At the time, I jumped to the defensive and ignored her comments. Only with the 20/20 vision of hindsight did I realize that she was right. Our closest friends know us better than anyone, meaning that they’re the best people to help us tackle our flaws.
Taking criticism is never easy. Hearing about our own flaws tends to bring up a defensive response that has ended many a friendship in the past. But getting criticism is also the only way we can work to improve. Next time a friend tries to give you constructive advice, do your best to get what you can out of it without getting hurt.
Differentiate Between Mean And Constructive Comments
Just because a friend tries to help you, doesn’t mean she’s right. If your friend is more insulting than constructive, it might be time to reevaluate your relationship. But if she takes you aside and addresses the issue with kindness and respect, recognize that she’s doing her best to help you. Hear her out.
Avoid Defensiveness
If your friend shares constructive criticism with respect, avoid getting defensive. Responding to criticism with a defensive or belligerent attitude is a sure-fire way to start an argument. Your first reaction might be to defend yourself and deny her claims, but try not to vocalize these feelings right away. Instead, thank your friend for her concern and take some distance to think things through.
Do your best to get what you can out of their advice
Respect Their Opinion
Hearing criticism is hard, but so is approaching a friend with advice. Respect that your friend has your best intentions at heart and wants to help you. Instead of harboring resentful feelings, think about what you’d do if you reversed your roles. Letting a loved one make mistakes is easy–it’s much harder to intervene, but in the end it’s the right thing to do. Hard as it might be to hear, take the advice as a sign of love. It takes a lot of courage and affection to approach someone on a sensitive topic.
Evaluate With Honesty
Before broaching the topic again, think about what your friend had to say and evaluate her opinion. Be honest with yourself—is she right? If you have questions or want to talk things out more, go to your friend for help. Likewise, if you’re feeling hurt or blindsided, now is the time to talk through those emotions.
Set Goals
Once you’ve evaluated your friend’s advice, decide how you want to use it. Form some concrete goals based on the advice you’ve received to improve yourself. No one is perfect, and criticism is the only way we can see our own flaws and work on them. Use your friend’s honesty to make new goals for self-improvement.
Avoid getting defensive so you can understand their point of view
Those close to us see us at our worst, making them the best people to turn to in times of trouble. They’re also the best people to help us better ourselves. Sensitive topics are difficult for everyone involved, but we walk away stronger, ready to strive for new goals.
The hardest part is accepting the fact that we’re not who we think we are and other people notice it. Once they voice it out, it’s like a cold bucket of ice being poured on us.
I hate it because sometimes I care about a person a lot, but I don’t know how to express it without sounding like I’m sticking my nose into something that’s not my business.
I met this guy for about 2 months already and we instantly had this chemistry that made it easy for us to talk to each other about almost anything. Don’t get me wrong, he has a girlfriend. But he’s having issues with her and he always goes to me for advice. What annoyed me is that he constantly approaches me for the same old issues that they’ve been going through and even if he always agreed about how right I was and with constant responses of “Yes, I should do that.” He never got around to doing anything. Recently I just couldn’t handle it anymore and told him that maybe there was something wrong with him and not his girl. Mainly because I realized that he doesn’t listen to anyone and he’s probably not listening to his girl either. For some reason, people can be so hard headed and they aren’t always willing to correct their mistakes…
One thing I’ve learned in life is to never be that girl whom a guy talks about his girlfriend about.
What I usually do when people tell me about my flaws is that I tell them that I’m going to think about it and that I have to assess my feelings. Whether their intentions were true or if they’re just saying it just to hurt me, it’s true that I really do need the time to think about it. I do it mostly because it gives me enough time to actually process my emotions without bursting out into a defensive stance.
Before anything else, I just wanted to point out that if something feels wrong, then maybe you shouldn’t be doing it. It saves everyone the pain of having to criticize you whether it’s constructive or not.?
My mom is always defensive when she’s being constructively criticized. It always hurt me because I approached her about it because I wanted improvements in our relationship and it wasn’t going to happen without any verbal agreements. The problem is that whenever I would try to talk to her about it and trust me I wasn’t even attacking her with words that are hurtful, it’s more on just letting her know about the things she could alternatively do instead of blaming other people all the time, she would throw at me unrelated faults that I also had. The problem is that even if you have the purest of intentions to help others, if they aren’t willing to accept the criticisms, nothings going to happen and it could even backfire.
I’ve read this quote about how it’s okay to walk away from toxic people and that includes family members.
More people should read this because half of the population are haters and it’s hard to draw a thicker line to constructive criticisms from haters who just bash the hell out of you and drag you down!
I don’t think that walking away stronger is the right thing to say. We don’t walk away, but we move on and get stronger. Walking away is synonymous to trying to escape something.
One thing I don’t like about trying to fish for constructive criticism is that others feel the need to be sarcastic or to just spill the beans like there’s an endless supply of it. I remember when I openly asked my teammates in the office (we were a small group and I can say that we’re close) what they disliked about me so I can improve on it if by any chance that I can. Let’s just say there’s one shallow person in that small group and she hates me even though I did nothing to her. I ended up hating her instead of being able to understand the things I needed to change. The others said constructive things and I accepted it, but what was more of a big deal for me is that shallow person who hates me just because I’m me.
People like this really exist. They’re the ones that you shouldn’t listen to because they aren’t saying these “criticisms” because they care about you.
As someone who works in the creative field, I always get opinions about my work that aren’t constructive. I’ve had clients who would trash my work out just because it wasn’t what they wanted. But as a way of living, we’ve succumbed to the fact that criticisms are something that we really need. Let’s just say I won’t get paid to do something that they don’t like 100%, so their criticisms equal to improvements and $$.?