Learning to not take criticism personally is one of the most liberating and productive things you can do for yourself and your career.

In graduate school, I learned how to take criticism for what it is and it really helped me to succeed.

I started to realize that the criticism had more to do with them than me.

Sure, I didn’t know something. That was about me. But, they really, really wanted to point it out, for whatever reasons.

Once I realized that people really do rather love giving feedback, it was very productive to take advantage of it.

It’s like putting more people than just yourself to work!

I realized that getting a bunch of feedback from people did not mean that they thought I was stupid.

People don’t even have time to think that many thoughts about you. They want to say what they have to say and get on with their day. You just made them feel better, probably.

Even if people did think I was stupid, my main goal was to learn the material which I was doing way faster with their help.

If you don’t give talks or show drafts of something, your collaborators can’t give you any feedback.

They don’t have a chance to go on a long rant about something that you are wrong about or missed.

A long rant from a knowledgeable person in the group could teach you lots of things! Especially, when you are new.

So, taking it as a personal attack, even if it IS a personal attack which it rarely is, does you no good. You don’t have time for that.

It’s really quite simple. When you get criticized, think about what you can do better, do better, and move on.

Forget about the rest and don’t spend precious time and mental energy over-analyzing things.

You are in charge and you can get anything done. You are the only one that needs to believe in you.

Once you understand that that’s all there is to it, life is really rather simple and productive.

Full blog post: 

https://howtophd.org/2018/09/learning-to-not-take-criticism.html

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