“Criticism is your best friend”
Throughout your life, you’ve probably heard this in several forms more than once. Criticism can be taken in either optimistically or pessimistically if you find yourself on the pessimistic side consider making criticism your best friend.
Instead of letting the criticism demotivate you look for a way to learn from it. For example, let’s say you come up with what you believe to be a great idea for a new app, you have everything planned out and now you want to share your ideas with others. Amidst introducing your idea to your friends and family several tell you “it won’t work”, “there’s an app like that already”, or “ I don’t think it’s a good idea” instead of negatively impacting your success, take it and learn from it. How you perceive that feedback is essential to your growth, you can say “I can find a way to make it work I just had to put more time into it”, “Yes there is an app like it already but what can I do to make mine even better”, and “I started planning because I know it is a good idea.”
Once you make criticism your best friend you can find yourself reaching for more than you intended. In a sense, by taking feedback in an optimistic way you allow for the flow of more ideas, you’re given many platforms to expand on, and you never know what you can gain from it. Criticism can ultimately stunt your growth if you let it by simply allowing for it to overrule your goals.
-Amanda Alvarez