“Don’t complain about the snow on your neighbor’s roof”, said Confucius, “when your own doorstep is unclean.”
A thing about criticism, it’s a nasty habit. Criticism is useless because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to prove himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.
Don’t you think? How you feel when someone criticize your work? Or when someone criticize your wardrobe? It’s so annoying. Sometimes all we want is encouraging words, not words that could hurt us and makes us resentful.
I used to have a boss who criticized my work from time to time but not in a good way. One time he told me “I didn’t hired you to look pretty”. I was so offended by his words and the harder I tried to not take it personal, I did. I felt that my hard work, my overtime and my ability were not appreciate. Even if I tried to push harder nothing was enough for him. Even if I got promoted and think about work 24-7, I wasn’t happy and nerveless encourage. What he created? Someone who resent him. I did my work the best I could, but I never respected my boss. I didn’t even like to look at him.
“Any great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little man.” … and any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.
B. F. Skinner, the world- famous psychologist, proved through his experiments that an animal rewarded for good behavior will learn much more rapidly and keep what it learns far more effectively than an animal punished for bad behavior. Later studies have shown that the same applies to humans. By criticizing, we do not make lasting changes and often incur resentment.
I’m not going to say here I haven’t criticized in the past because I have, but I realized this doesn’t take me anywhere. Doesn’t make me feel good afterwards. When we criticize we are only thinking in ourselves instead of thinking in the position of the other. We may feel better in that moment, but later we don’t gain anything. At the end we don’t know what we would do if we be under similar circumstances.
We have to remember when we are dealing with people, we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures who are dealing with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.
“Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness.” Dale Carnegie
To a better way of life! Cheers
xoxo,
Cristina
