Turning Criticism into Feedback: A Lesson That’s Changing My Life

Over the past year, I’ve been work­ing with a men­tor who prac­tices Neu­ro-Lin­guis­tic Pro­gram­ming (NLP). One of the first — and most pow­er­ful — exer­cis­es we worked through was about chang­ing how I inter­pret crit­i­cism.

For most of my life, I’ve seen a lot of things as crit­i­cism. A raised eye­brow. A com­ment. An email. Even if the per­son wasn’t upset, I felt like they were being crit­i­cal. But were they really?

That’s the shift my men­tor helped me begin to make: see­ing what I used to call crit­i­cism as sim­ply feed­back.

Think about it. How often do we say, ​“They’re so crit­i­cal,” when real­ly, they’re just express­ing a thought or obser­va­tion? Sure, there are tru­ly crit­i­cal peo­ple in the world — I’ve been one myself — but most of the time, it’s not about attack. It’s just input. Feedback.

The Cost of Mis­in­ter­pret­ing Feedback

I can look back now and see how much this has cost me — pro­fes­sion­al­ly and per­son­al­ly. In the past, I’ve stopped work­ing with clients or ven­dors based on how I felt about their tone or words. Maybe they were direct. Maybe they were blunt. But instead of being curi­ous, I got defen­sive. I inter­nal­ized it. And in some cas­es, I cut ties that, in hind­sight, didn’t need to be severed.

This plays out in per­son­al rela­tion­ships too. As a hus­band, father, busi­ness own­er, and friend — I’ve real­ized how cru­cial it is to not let ego or inse­cu­ri­ty get in the way of hear­ing the heart behind someone’s words.

The Shift: Curios­i­ty Over Defensiveness

Now, I’m prac­tic­ing a new mind­set. It’s still a work in progress (baby steps!), but I’m learn­ing to:

• Pause before reacting

• Ask myself: ​“Is this real­ly crit­i­cism, or is it feedback?”

• Choose grat­i­tude for the input — even if it stings

• Avoid writ­ing reac­tive emails or texts (or hit­ting send too fast)

• Pick up the phone, hop on Zoom, or meet face-to-face instead of hid­ing behind screens

• Stop can­cel­ing peo­ple in my head just because I felt a lit­tle hurt

This doesn’t mean ignor­ing red flags or tol­er­at­ing tox­ic behav­ior. Some sit­u­a­tions real­ly do require bound­aries. But many don’t. Many just require a new lens — a lit­tle humil­i­ty — and a lot of curiosity.

Progress I Didn’t Expect

One sur­prise? My wife has noticed the change more than any­one. I don’t always see it, but she does — and that’s huge for me. It tells me this inner work is working.

So I want­ed to share this with you — maybe you’ve felt this too? Maybe you’ve inter­pret­ed feed­back as per­son­al attack, or you’ve react­ed defen­sive­ly and regret­ted it later.

I’m still learn­ing. Still grow­ing. But I love the process.

How about you? Have you ever made this shift? Are you open to see­ing things differently?

Let me know — I’d love to hear your thoughts.