Never let other people tell you that you are not good enough

By Mazala S.D Zulu

Three years ago, a secondary school pupil dropped out of school to go after her dream. When she made her decision of leaving school, she got a lot of negative criticism that she felt she had made a wrong decision. Despite all the negativity around her, she still went after her dream by listening also to her critics. 3 years later, this young lady is leaving a life which most of us will just dream of.

Ask high achievers to name the biggest benefit they’ve enjoyed as a result of their success, and you’d be surprised… It’s not the money, fame, or material trappings of success. It’s the personal transformation they experienced. As you stretch to achieve your dreams, you grow and permanently transform yourself.

With so many individuals vying for attention in society, it’s more important than ever that you always stand out. If you want to develop your skills and reach your full potential, it’s important to seek out feedback proactively. So, how can you do this, without exposing yourself to unbalanced criticism?

Your immediate response is the most important one – it has the greatest scope for making things worse or better.

Learn to remain calm:

It does not matter whether the rhetorical slap comes from a family member, colleague or a boss. Negative criticism can give rise to anger or feelings of inadequacy. Expressing these emotions will only dig you deeper into a hole, and give your critic the high ground. A couple of deep, quiet breaths will help settle you.

Avoid pressuring yourself:

Don’t pressure yourself to think of the perfect response on the spot. You probably won’t. Instead, try this simply and calmly repeat your critic’s complaints back to him, to make sure that you’ve understood him properly. Making steady eye contact and in a non-aggressive tone. The goal here is to take the focus away from any personality clash, and place it squarely on substantive issues.

If you manage to pull this off, you will have performed the equivalent of turning the other cheek. A truly aggressive critic might be hoping to goad you into a fight, or at least to make you betray anger. Or he may be expecting you to cave in, accept his critique, and slink off, defeated. Instead, what you’re doing is taking the focus off of your reaction and putting it back onto his criticisms – without accepting or denying them.

Open up Both Perspectives:

This establishes respect as a key element of the conversation. The objective repetition tactic may set him off-balance, and inspire him to backtrack. If so, now is a good time to open a real discussion of the critique. You will have shown that you’re willing to look at things from his perspective, and you can see how he might have reasonably drawn the conclusions he has. Now you’ll give him the opportunity to return the favor.

Maintaining Your Self-Esteem:

Being subjected to unfair criticism can easily be a bruising experience, so it’s important that you don’t let the experience damage your self-esteem or self-confidence.

One of the common ways we block success is by refusing to take action on a project or opportunity until we can see the entire pathway from start to finish. We are afraid to start, because the outcome is uncertain. While we plan, think, research, and analyze, the opportunity slips away.

Highly successful people take a different approach. They just lean into it – they open themselves to opportunities and become willing to do what it takes to pursue opportunities further – without any expectations. They say “yes” to opportunities, take the first step … and then find out along the way if they want to keep going

Remember, success is not just about learning…it is about taking action. The Success Principles will work for you – but only when you use them – consistently.

Good luck. Always believe in yourself and your decisions.