The Art of Criticism

If you do anything / different / beyond others expectations in your work on your own way or private life that impacts someone else, Criticism is always possible, and likely. When you get criticized, do you view it as failure or opportunity? It’s not what you know that makes difference in how you handle criticism and confrontations, but how you apply & utilize what you know. Criticism is real worth comes form its ability to communicate to influence or to motivate others. The Word criticism comes from Greek word “Kritikos” which means ability to discern or judge merits and demerits and speak accordingly. Well all hope will be treated with matter & admiration. However most people experienced criticism in ways that are blaming and shaming. We enjoy criticizing politicians, social systems and anything that is directly or indirectly makes impact on us. We, at times, don’t know how to react to criticism constructively. Commonly we belong to : a] Scream b] Yell, C] threaten. And believe that that is best way for getting work done. There is nothing wrong in criticizing But destructive criticism is problem, which only identifies problem and not offer / provide solutions or self involvement. The objective of criticism must be on challenge or opportunity that outwit each other. The billion dollar question is “ Why we Criticize?” Well, when we have common concern or values but different perceptions. Criticism can be very destructive e.g. (“you are useless, duffer.” “you are a looser”, “you can’t do things right”…..) specially in parent-child relationship. If parent says to his child “you can” then he perform even if others deny. But destructively says “You can’t then he will not even if other billions of people says he can.

Are you travelling along the slippery slope to your grave?

When it comes right down to it where ever you go is where you are, whatever you end up doing, that’s what you are doing, whatever you are thinking right now, that’s what’s on your mind, what has happened to you, has already happened. The important part is how are you going to handle it? In other words “NOW WHAT”. Like it or not this is all we have to work with. At every moment of day, we find ourselves at crossroads of here and now. The reason we can often feel lost is because we momentarily lose touch with ourselves and with full extent of our possibilities. We fall into a robot like way of seeing, thinking and doing. In those moments, we are breaking contact with our deepest inner self. What we need to do is wake up to way we do things. Waking up goes hand in hand, with what we might call “wisdom or spiritual enlightenment” which helps us to see more deeply into cause and effect, interconnectedness of things. By seeing and understanding your inner self and trying to change your life for better does not mean you are weird or becoming a religious zombie. It is simply being you and knowing something about yourself. It helps to see path we call life with its direction and meaning. You can easily remain on a slippery slope right into your grave if you do not do something about it. We may never quite touch fullness of our possibilities. Instead we lock ourselves into a personal fiction that we already know who we are, that we know where we are and where we are going, that we know what is happening, all while remaining enshrouded in thoughts, fantasies and impulses about past and future. About what we want and like, what we fear and do not like. These thoughts spin out continuously, under veiling our direction and very ground we standing on. If what happens now does influence what happens next, then does it not make sense to look around from time to time, so you are more in touch with what is happening around now? You can then take your inner and outer bearings and perceive with clarity path that you are actually on, direction in which you are going.