How to react to people who criticize you

Unless your skin is incredibly thick, it hurts. Some actors and TV stars even go so far as to avoid the press the day after their show, in case they have been criticized. There’s something about being criticized, even if you know deep down that the critic is right, that he just cuts through you.

So how should you react when people criticize you?

Part of the answer depends on where the criticism took place.

It’s often easier to ignore in real life than online, but both can be awkward.

In real life, it’s usually best to ignore the critic as much as possible.

That’s easy enough to do if you get into the habit of finding little holes wherever you look; essentially you can say it has nothing to do with you, it’s just what the other person does.

If, on the other hand, you’ve been caught doing something silly, often the best solution is to put your hands up and admit that whatever you’re being criticized for is a fair comment and that you were wrong. This has the advantage that it often softens the problem at hand. Your honesty in admitting the problem outweighs the person who brought it to your attention.

Of course, if that happens too often, it can lead to a downward spiral where you end up making more mistakes and getting criticized more often. A pattern that is best not to get into, but if you find yourself there, you should take steps to get out rather than dig deeper.

Nowadays, how online is often a bigger problem than face-to-face.

Cyber ​​bullying happens at school; that’s another form of criticism and one that many school-age children have a hard time dealing with.

But critically it can take place almost anywhere you are online.

Blog comments, additions to your videos, Facebook, forums, etc. Any place where people meet online.

And there’s something much more public about that, in part because it’s available for the world to see and, in your mind, the whole world. has viewed.

Dealing with criticism online is a much more difficult art to master.

There’s a lot to be said for simply ignoring it.

The fewer comments there are, the faster the page in question will disappear from everyone’s radar, and the faster it will disappear.

If you really have to respond, take the time to write your words somewhere else: your word processor or even a piece of paper.

Then read them before you post them online. Ideally, you should read them out loud and, if possible, pass them on to someone you trust before you hit the “send” button.

Because on the internet our words have a habit of coming back to haunt us.

Just like you can’t retrieve an email or text message once it’s sent, it’s hard to unpublish a reply on the web. Before you know it, Google will have indexed it or someone will have tweeted about it.

Then you can end up with an egg on your face, simply because you were trying to defend yourself against criticism.