One of the areas that can be difficult for people who want to improve and grow is to be able to take in negative or constructive feedback and make changes.

This can be an incredible way to gain insight into areas that are holding you back. But you have to be able to calm your emotional response. You have to be able to evaluate the feedback without strong emotion. Then you have to be able to change.

Most people are unable to change based on feedback from others. We want to protect our ego, so we tend to deny there is a problem. We argue and fight to prove us right and them wrong. When we do agree to change, it is usually a quick, short-term attempt that fades away. This leaves us back where we were originally, with a weakness that we are not able to improve.

We have to be able to take in the information without the immediate emotional denial. We have to realize that someone’s opinion isn’t always accurate but might clue us in to an area we should work to improve.

Years ago, I heard Dr. Wayne Dyer talk about how he can get up in front of a large audience for a speech. He said he started to realize early on that if there are 10,000 people in the audience that means there are 10,000 points of view.

If he gets obsessed with those that don’t like him or don’t like what he has to say it will ruin his presentation for everyone else. So, he focuses on doing the best job he can and tries to be as authentic as possible. He doesn't concern himself with each person's opinion.

In the 2,500-year-old text, the Tao Te Ching, verse 41 addresses this. It says:

“The wise student hears of the Tao and practices it diligently.

The average student hears of the Tao and practices it now and again.

The foolish student hears of the Tao and laughs and laughs.

Without the laughter, it wouldn’t be the Tao.”

The Tao Te Ching is one of the wisest books ever written and yet there are many that will hear of the Tao and laugh. Many times, they do not understand the wisdom and their response is to try and minimize the value of the Tao.

So, the first step to being able to take feedback and improve is to gain control of your own emotions. There will always be a negative opinion. There will always be naysayers. We have to keep focusing on what is best and move forward with confidence.

But even if you are able to avoid the emotional anguish that sometimes accompanies negative feedback, how do we take the information and then make improvements in our lives?

If, after evaluating the information, we find that we have to make a change, we should work to change consistently. Changing consistently means that we make a behavior change and do it over and over again.

The repetitive nature of this is important. We have to do it enough that it starts to form a pattern. As the pattern forms it will start to change the structures in our lives and then the mental models that we hold.

But without the repetition it only becomes a one-time attempt at change and will not last. The repetition is the key that will allow the change to become a permanent improvement in your life.

Repetition is very important but often hard to achieve. It is better to start with very small steps. Doing too much makes it hard to keep going. Starting small allows the habits to build up. It will make it easier to keep going long enough for the change to have an impact.

Adding more to an ingrained habit is much easier than starting from scratch. Use the initial motivation to start to build that ingrained habit. Doing that first will help to address the areas that you would like to adjust in your life to improve. Then add more to that habit as you progress.

Learning from criticism can be an incredible tool to help you improve. To gain the most from negative or constructive feedback, we have to calm our emotion. We have to realize that everyone will always have an opinion. We have to realize that their opinion doesn’t mean that they are correct. We have to objectively and unemotionally evaluate the feedback. Then we have to take small steps over and over to form new habits based on what we feel are weaknesses.

Doing this can help overcome an obstacle. It will help you to improve by taking in this valuable feedback. You will learn to take that feedback and evaluate it. From this evaluation you can develop clear steps to improve. Or you can simply decide to disregard the opinion as inaccurate. But you will no longer be driven by the emotional sting of hearing criticism.