Turn Insults and Criticism Into Weapons for Your Success

When you can’t take feedback or criticism and use it to your advantage, you’re leaving so much cash on the table.

You’re declining a free shortcut in life to become your highest self.

Being able to take criticism well will take you to the next level.

And after reading this, you won’t lose confidence, feel hurt or offended when someone insults or criticises you anymore.

You’ll no longer feel bitter and resentful.

You’ll be able to take the information — without reacting emotionally — and leverage it to your advantage.

Here’s how to become emotionally resilient in the face of criticism and insults, and weaponise it for your personal gain.

William’s criticism

My good friend William is seeing a girl whose parents only speak Mandarin.

So, instead of accepting this barrier, William decided to learn Mandarin in an effort to communicate with her parents better — very noble.

He studied and practiced for months and was finally getting some traction.

He planned to put his practice to the test at dinner with her family one night. They would surely be proud of all the hard work he’d put in. The potential son-in-law, taking time in his life to study your language and communicate with you — that’s special.

But when he opened his mouth and began to speak, the response wasn’t exactly what he’d expected.

They were disappointed with his progress — suggesting he hadn’t come very far despite practicing for so long.

He was crushed.

Now, William’s mind can go a number of directions here— we’ll start with the first 2 and talk about number 3 in a second:

1. He can become understandably hurt by the cold reception to all his hard work — and give up.
2. He can become resentful and bitter toward the people who have thwarted all his efforts.

William assumed he’d be praised for the effort — and in my opinion, he should’ve been.

But he wasn’t and received some criticism instead.

He must’ve felt personally offended — which is the natural response. All that effort that he put in for them, and they didn’t show any gratitude.

But here’s the thing.

Both these options — 1) becoming hurt and losing self-confidence or 2) becoming resentful to the criticiser — are a result of identifying with the criticism.

That is, taking it personally.

It’s only when you identify too closely with the criticism that it affects you.

You believe it’s you that’s being criticised. Your ego swells, and when your ego swells, you lose your logical self — you lose grasp of the present moment.

Why is that?

Maybe you feel as though the outcome isn’t what you envisioned, you’re not as perfect as you thought, or that your reputation is being questioned.

But at the end of the day, it’s useless to take this criticism personally.

Feeling attacked makes us deaf to the constructive nature of criticism.

“The trouble with most of us is that we’d rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.”

— Norman Vincent Peale

We immediately feel frustrated, angry, resentful and even sad. We resist, and our mind is preoccupied defending ourselves.

William has taken these words, latched onto them, and now feels hurt — I would too.

But this doesn’t help him.

This ruins his confidence and might make him feel resentful toward them.

Now, I’m not saying he isn’t justified — but I’m saying his approach is not useful to him.

And that brings us back to the third option — what William could do instead.

the process to follow when you receive criticism or insults

“To watch everything inside of you and outside, and when there is something happening to you, to see it as if it were happening to someone else, with no comment, no judgement, no attitude, no interference, no attempt to change, only to understand.”

— Anthony de Mello

Option 3. Hear the criticism, don’t identify with it, and using the learnings to change his approach.

Option 1 and 2 are easy to do — but get you nowhere.

Option 3 is extremely difficult to master — I’m talking monk levels of difficulty.

But if you can make it work, your life will change forever.

step 1 — put it through a filter

“Feedback is the breakfast of champions, but don’t let it overwhelm you. Not all criticism is constructive.”
 — Ken Blanchard

The first thing is to make sure the criticism or insult is valid.

If someone were to laugh at me and tease me for being 4 foot 10, it wouldn’t affect me — because it’s false.

And that’s what this filter is for.

When you become offended by criticism or an insult, the first thing you should do is look inward.

Why are you offended? It’s likely that you agree with them. It’s likely that they’re saying something that’s somewhat true.

Otherwise, you’d discard it.

But some things do slip through the gaps — namely lingering trauma.

If you used to have acne, and someone points out a pimple — it may hurt, even if it’s not an issue anymore.

So make sure you run it through this filter to make sure it’s real criticism.

And in William’s case, I wouldn’t be too affected by the criticism — because it’s unreasonable.

Maybe it’s true that his Mandarin isn’t great, but that’s because he’s learning — and with continued effort, he will master it.

So for William to view it from that lens, is for him to say — I won’t be cut or offended because it makes sense that I’m not great yet, since I’m still learning, and putting in lots of effort to communicate with her parents.

step 2 — process it

If you’ve decided that it’s not true — it can be dismissed.

Thrown in the trash — discarded. There’s no use for it. It’s fiction.

But if you’ve given it some thought, and you decide it is true — the first thing to do is to be proud of yourself. Removing yourself from criticism and being able to hear the words as they are, is an extremely mature and rare stance to be able to take.

The truth is rare in life, and if someone is giving you the truth (as harsh as it may be) then you’ve been blessed with an honest perspective that perhaps you couldn’t quite admit for a while.

My friend John would consistently tell me I was fat and I needed to lose weight when we were younger.

I resisted and resisted. I thought he was a bully. I thought he was praying on my downfall. But one day, I finally admitted it. He was right. I was overweight.

Because he was being direct about it, I thought negatively of him. But I knew the words he was saying were true.

And once I admitted it, he was one of the people who helped me lose the weight. He taught me about nutrition and exercise.

So once you’ve validated the criticism, and taken the meaning of the words they’re saying, rather than a personal attack — you’re ready to weaponise the criticism and use it to your advantage.

This is for William to say: Yes, my Mandarin isn’t great, and this has been good feedback to know I need to improve. I should ask them specifically what they recommend I work on.

Strip back the ego from it. Yes, it might be hurtful, but only if you latch onto the feedback.

Use the feedback.

Summary

In the face of criticism, hear it, but don’t identify with it and use the learnings to change your approach:

1. Make sure the criticism or insult is valid / true
2. If valid, extract the valuable feedback from the criticism and use it to better yourself

And remember, everybody receives criticism.

The ones who are defensive and feel hurt — lose.

But the ones who hear it for what it is, and use it to improve themselves — win.

Thank you for reading.

I’m just sharing the lessons learned on my path to building my Mental Fortress - an impenetrable and stable mind.

If you found it helpful, that’s great. I figured, why not share it with the world as I crystallise my own ideas.

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Sincerely,

Eren