Chapter 15

Coping with Criticism

Athena, as you’ll recall, wasn’t procrastinating applying for college; she wasn’t ready for college and she had other plans for herself. But Athena was putting off something very important—telling her parents.

It wouldn’t be easy. Education was an important family value in Athena’s household. Both her parents were college graduates, and they had always assumed Athena would get a degree. Once, during dinner, when Athena casually mentioned that one of her friends was forgoing college to play in his band, the shadow that passed over her father’s face closed the subject and ruined her appetite for the evening.

Pleasers are particularly sensitive to disapproval or criticism from others, especially those they love. No harsh words need be spoken; all it takes is a look, real or imagined. As a pleaser, if your loved ones aren’t happy with you, you worry that your connection with them is at risk. It brings up a primal fear: being rejected by those you depend on and love.

Perfectionists also share this fear of being “kicked out of the tribe,” but for a different reason. The perfectionist must feel respected to feel secure, and maintaining that respected status is best done by not making any mistakes, not giving anyone an opportunity to criticize. Jordan believed that getting A’s in everything, maintaining a 4.0 GPA, and going to a top college would guarantee him a secure position in society. As long as he performed perfectly, he could never be judged “less than” or not good enough, and he’d always have the respect of others. Or so he thought. Both Athena and Jordan would be well served heeding Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice: “Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway.”

For the pleaser and the perfectionist, learning to cope with criticism is an essential part of overcoming procrastination. Being sensitive to the judgments of others, you’re prone to put off doing anything that may result in those judgments. To get those things done, you’ll need to develop some resilience to criticism, which will be especially difficult if, like Jordan and Athena, you’ve spent your whole life avoiding it. When you’ve taken ownership of a task that may result in disappointing others, drawing criticism or loss of status, I suggest you try the following exercise.

If your loved ones aren’t happy with you, it brings up the primal fear of being rejected, of being alone.

Exercise: Coping with Criticism

  1. Think of something you’re afraid of saying or doing because someone might criticize you.
  2. Imagine the worst thing that person might say or think about you if you did this thing.
  3. Think up an assertive response. (Assertiveness is standing up for yourself, not putting others down.) What are you afraid that person might say to your assertive response? Answer that with another assertive response.
  4. Continue coming up with assertive responses to everything you are afraid that person might think or say.

To download a Coping With Criticism worksheet, go to http://www.newharbinger.com/35876.

With this practice, remember that all you’re doing is practicing standing up for yourself while tolerating others’ disagreement or criticism. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to convince them that you are right or to make them see it your way. The point is not to get others on your side. It’s to get you on your side!

Here is Athena’s completed coping practice for her task of telling her parents her plans for a gap year:

Parents: We know better than you what’s good for you, and if you really cared about us, you wouldn’t do this.

Athena: You may know better what is good for me and you might be right, but part of me growing up is doing what I believe is right. Even if I’m wrong, I can learn from this.

Parents: You’re foolish and a terrible disappointment to us. This will ruin your life.

Athena: I’m sorry you think that, and it’s hard for me to do this without your support, but this is part of me growing up.

Parents: Well, if you want to ruin your life, go ahead!

Athena: I’m not trying to ruin my life. I’m learning to stand up for what I want to do.

Parents: This is the worst decision you’ve ever made!

Athena: I know you don’t think this is what I should be doing, but it takes courage for me to do what I think is best for me and not to rely only on what you think. This is part of growing up.

You can turbocharge your coping practice by asking a trusted friend to play the role of the person you fear will criticize you. If you cannot find someone to practice with, write your own script, then read it aloud. When you hear the critical words spoken, you get a more powerful experience of what you are afraid someone might say. And saying your assertive responses out loud will empower you in a way that imagining them cannot.

If you have any trouble coming up with assertive responses, review chapter 9 for help. And if you find your passion fading, remind yourself of the personal values you are moving toward: (1) acting instead of procrastinating, (2) standing up for yourself, and most important, (3) achieving deeper, more meaningful personal connections with others by being authentic.

Whether to achieve excellence or authentic social connections, we must develop resilience regarding the judgments of others.

Although Jordan’s coping practice may look and sound quite a bit different, at the heart of it, the perfectionist’s challenge is the same as the pleaser’s. To take the risks necessary to achieve the excellence the perfectionist desires, you must have resilience regarding the judgments of others about your mistakes. In other words, the perfectionist must be comfortable with mistakes. Does this mean you need to be happy with the mistake itself? No. It means you won’t let mistakes get in the way of your happiness.

This will take practice, and a great place to start is to imagine yourself falling short at something important to you, like getting a lower grade on a test than you expect, making an error on the sports field, or saying something in a group of people that isn’t well received. When you have the situation in your mind, imagine the worst possible thing that others might think about you, and what an assertive response might be. Here’s some dialogue from Jordan’s coping practice based on his fear of being judged or criticized if he should do poorly on his SATs. Remember, coping practice dialogue is not based on what people will actually think or say, but rather on what you are most afraid they will think or say.

Teacher: I’m really disappointed in you, Jordan. You had so much potential. I expected more of you.

Coping practice is designed to remind you who you are at a time when you are most vulnerable to forgetting, when you are afraid of being judged by others.

Jordan: I understand that you’re disappointed. I am, too. But I can learn from my mistakes.

Teacher: This mistake indicates that you don’t deserve to get into a good college.

Jordan: It’s possible that this will affect what colleges will accept me, but I did the best I could. I did well at some things and less well at others.

Teacher: Well, the best you could is not good enough! You’ve lost my respect.

Jordan: I’m sorry that I’ve lost your respect, but I know that my performance doesn’t make me a less worthy person. Trying and making mistakes is better than not trying at all, and I did try.

Note that Jordan’s assertions, like Athena’s, were less about convincing others and more about convincing himself. Coping practice is designed to remind you who you are at a time when you are most vulnerable to forgetting, when you are afraid of being judged by others. For the perfectionist, “who you are” is someone who values excellence and is willing to risk failure—and losing others’ respect—to achieve it.

Coping with criticism is a valuable practice for every teen, including warriors and rebels. When Emily’s friends tease her about her messy room, she feels ashamed. And as everyone who’s been shamed knows, it isn’t likely to change our behavior. Shame is a kind of stress, and when Emily is stressed, the last thing she’ll do is embrace a boring task like housework. She’ll get lost in a game or something else that engages her. To change any behavior, we need to be motivated from within ourselves, not from without.

And while Tyler, as a rebel, may seem like someone who doesn’t care what others think, the exact opposite can be true. Rebels want to be different from everybody else, but not because they want to be alone. If you’re a rebel, you want to stand out as unique within your social group. You want others in your group to value you as in some way different and special. The worst criticism Tyler can imagine is being viewed as one of the crowd. For example, Tyler bought a new jacket that he thought he looked great in, but when he got to school the next day, he noticed three other students with the same jacket. That evening he was back at the mall returning it. Tyler wanted to stand out, not to blend in.

The more you practice with worst-case scenarios where you are being judged, criticized, even mocked, the more accustomed you’ll be to the negative waves of emotion that arise, and the better able to ride them. Greet them with a deep, diaphragmatic breath, and remind yourself who you are and the values you are working toward. In addition to the values of excellence, connection, engagement, and autonomy, here are some more you can employ.

At this point, I’ve introduced all the tools you need to take control of the tasks you’ve been procrastinating on. If you can identify unhelpful underlying beliefs, let new beliefs take root, breathe and ride the wave, divide until doable, eliminate distractions, beat the clock, stay on schedule, and cope with criticism, you are going to be one badass taskmaster.

When you are resilient to criticism, you can get the things done that you need to get done, whether others like it or not!

But even if you are successful with all these tools, there’s one obstacle remaining that can thwart your best efforts at overcoming procrastination. That obstacle is your own natural tendency to protect yourself from the vulnerability of your type. In the next chapter, I’ll define the last challenge for every procrastinator: knowing what it is that you are—and aren’t—aiming for.