It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness
William L. Watkinson
I've found during my life and career that its far better to
provide encouragement and support the positive than concentrate on the
negatives and criticize someone's mistakes.
One of the problems with criticism is that the criticizer
assumes that they know better than the person being criticised. Yes sometimes
this is true but there are also a lot of times where the person doing the
criticizing doesn't know or understand the difficulties that the other person
has gone through to achieve their results.
As Elvis Presley once said:
“Don’t criticize what you don’t understand, son. You never walked in that man’s shoes.”
It also tends to have a demoralizing effect that can squash
enthusiasm. For example, If a child enjoys decorating a Christmas Tree and then
told by a parent that it is no good - or the parent re-decorates the tree for
themselves, then the painful message to the child can be that it's no good and
doesn't want to do it again in the future.
A better way of handling the Christmas Tree, is to simply
accept that the child's decoration is different to your own ways of doing it
with their own style that's developing over time...plus in the grand scheme of
things doesn't really matter! See the positives in what they've done - so for
example, if they've stuck the fairy on the tree upside down then that's their
creative talent emerging.
Concentrating on the positives and providing encouragement
is especially important for dealing with neurodiverse conditions such as
dyslexia, dyspraxia and autism. It's all too easy to see the surface level
difficulties in reading, having difficulties in physical activity or saying the
wrong thing and this reinforces the idea that the person is no good.
Regardless of whether someone is a child or adult, it is
much better, easier and beneficial to move towards something positive, such as
encouragement, than move away from something like criticism that is negative.
This is because criticism can have that squashing effect
mentioned earlier where they might feel deflated whereby they just stop and
give up. Whereas by encouraging someone, even if they make lots of mistakes,
has the advantage of allowing the person, young or old to learn, develop and
progress.
Not all criticism is bad. Constructive criticism is useful
feedback on how something could be done better and is given in a way that the
person receiving the criticism feels encouraged and positive about the
experience, whereby they can see how things could be improved.
Deconstructive criticism however, tends to be a very
negative experience, whereby the criticism comes across as upsetting and
hurtful with just a very negative message with no genuine or proper ways to
improve
It's also important to realize that a lot of criticism is
actually about the person who's doing the criticizing. It's usually because
they have insecurities and feel the need to project those insecurities onto
someone else. The person being criticized might not have done anything wrong at
all!
The other effect other than squashing the person being
criticised, is that the critical person might end up alone as nobody likes to
be around negative people. However, people do enjoy being around those who make
them feel good, strong and positive about themselves. This of course comes
naturally with encouragement.
One good way of assessing whether you need to consider and
take on board the critical advice of someone else is to look at the person
giving the criticism. Do they know what they're talking about?
For example, you wouldn't ask your medical doctor about
computer issues!
The difficulty comes when the unhelpful advice and criticism
comes from friends and family members. You have to realise that although you're
connected through blood or friendship, it still doesn't mean that they know or
understand your situation and they might also have a hidden agenda of their own
Regardless of who the criticizer is, its always okay to say
"Thanks very much for your opinion" and leave it at that.
That's all Criticism is - someone else's opinion and it
might or might not be right or justified.
So remember, criticism squashes and encouragement builds!
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