Raise your hand if you love being criticized and you aren't a sadomasochist. Hint: I'm not raising my hand. I've never enjoyed criticism and have been a thin-skinned son of a bitch sometimes.

Apparently, fate knows this and placed me in a job where I get plenty of criticism each and every week. Yay me!

I work for a large healthcare insurance company. We send out promotional and educational material to healthcare providers like doctors, nurse practitioners, and specialists like orthopedists.

A large portion of those materials urge healthcare providers to properly code and document their medical diagnoses. Any time a doctor diagnoses you with some condition like psoriasis there is a code associated with that diagnosis.

Those codes are important for a number of reasons, but in terms of Medicare those codes are important for the doctor and healthcare insurance companies to get paid. The providers also need to submit adequate documentation that supports their diagnosis.

I help manage these promotional and educational materials and that includes deciding when they are completed and ready to be approved. But before the approval comes, I have to send these materials to my boss.

I love my boss. She's a great person and she knows her shit backwards and forwards. Nothing is getting past her. You can't pull the wool over her eyes or bullshit her. To say she's detail-oriented is to understate it.

No matter what I do, she always has something to say about the materials I send her. There is always some comment on how the materials could be better. It can be frustrating as fuck.

On the other hand, I know her criticisms are valid in almost every case. It would be one thing if she sucked at her job, or if the criticism was personal, and was dropping some bullshit criticism, but no these are legit.

It reminds me of an anecdote in Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish. He used to work for an intelligence agency in Canada. He stood up in a meeting to give a presentation about the particulars of a mission but was interrupted shortly thereafter by someone else.

That person told him that he should not be speaking to the group until he could speak more competently about the mission. Shane sat down and that person then spoke about the mission in far greater detail than Shane thought was possible. The criticism stung, of course, but Shane took the lesson from it and put far more effort into his work thenceforth.

My boss has an extremely high standard of what she wants our materials to look like when viewed by healthcare providers, just like the person in Shane Parrish's meeting had. She's absolutely right to expect that given our company's position in our industry.

And just as Shane improved his efforts so have I. My boss' criticisms have definitely pushed me to have a greater attention to detail, which has benefitted me at work, but also in my writing.

It's unpleasant to put in hard work on something only for someone to tear it apart. As Parrish mentions in Clear Thinking, this is our ego at work. We're very territorial about our ego and criticism feels like an attack on our very identity as a smart and competent person. It's instinctual.

That's why it feels personal, even though its usually not.

Additionally, we often suffer from a self-serving bias, a habit of evaluating things in a way that protects or enhances our self-image. You get some criticism and respond with "I did the best I could."

Similarly, we have a tendency to blame others or things outside of our control. We're fighting against the feedback the world gives us to protect our beliefs and ego. Instead of changing we start complaining.

Even though it's hard, we have to move past that initial sting and those hurt feelings and realize that in order to grow and improve at things we're going to have to set that shit aside and objectively listen to the criticism.

We've got to realize that this is an opportunity to get better. Someone has told you exactly what you've done wrong. Now you can fix it and do better the next time! You've been given a gift, not a death sentence.

As Parrish put it, his thinking about criticism changed once he started running his own business and started focusing on outcomes instead of ego:

The more I'd given up wanting to be right, the better the outcomes I had. I didn't care about getting the credit; I cared about getting the results.

And that is the key. Focus on getting better and getting results instead of focusing on your hurt feelings and ego.

It's definitely not easy. Believe me, I know. But as with anything, the more you do it the better you get at it. Eventually, you start to realize the criticism is good for you, even though you might not like it.

The alternative is to do nothing, say nothing and eventually being nothing. How fulfilling a life do you think that will be?

Here's the thing, if you do nothing, say nothing and be nothing you'll get criticism for that too. And this time the criticism is going to hurt more than it ever has because it's going to come from yourself, or it's going to come from someone else and you'll know its correct.

You'll realize you passed up so many opportunities to better yourself all because of some critical words from someone, and that someone was probably just trying to help you.

I realize some people are better at criticizing than others. You can do the same thing wrong, and one person will come at you and say you could have done that better while someone else will come to you and say that sucked and you suck.

That's just how it's going to be sometimes. We can't control how people speak to us, but we can control how we respond. Try to get some specifics when you get criticized in an unduly harsh way and try to realize that people that criticize you in that way are probably insecure or having a bad day. Overlook the manner and focus on the particulars.

Not every criticism you receive is going to be correct. It's in your interest to discern what's relevant and what isn't. A criticism is not a truism. And if it is incorrect, push back in a respectful manner. Additionally, some people really are just assholes and want to fuck with you.

Criticism is just part of life. There's really no avoiding it, especially if you are creating something and putting it before the public. Whatever it is there is someone that doesn't like it. Be glad you are getting noticed, and then take the criticism on board for what it's worth.

If you are getting criticized then you are alive, and people are noticing your work. That's a good thing. Now, in order to really succeed, listen to the criticism and see if it's valid. Ask yourself, will this criticism actually help my work? If so, thank the person.

Fuck your ego and focus on results. Or focus on your ego and be nothing and feel like shit about it later when it's too late to do something about it. Easy choice.