“Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.”

“Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.”

One of my favourite personal development people is the psychologist Wayne Dyer.

He seems to be a very warm person but he also someone who takes a lot personal responsibility and is assertive.

This is reflected in his work. He’s kind but he’s not here just to make you feel good. Through a no-nonsense approach he makes you realize obvious – but sometimes uncomfortable – things about how pretty much all of this is up to you. And how many things are quite simple but you are standing in your own way and overcomplicating it all.

Dr. Dyer’s advice can be applied to just about any part of life. Today I’d like to take a few of his thoughts and see how they can help you improve your social life. If you would like to read more from Wayne Dyer then two really solid books to start with are Pulling Your Own Strings and Your Erroneous Zones.

1. Your relationships are in your mind.

“As you think so shall you be! Since you cannot physically experience another person, you can only experience them in your mind. Conclusion: All of the other people in your life are simply thoughts in your mind. Not physical beings to you, but thoughts. Your relationships are all in how you think about the other people of your life. Your experience of all those people is only in your mind. Your feelings about your lovers come from your thoughts. For example, they may in fact behave in ways that you find offensive. However, your relationship to them when they behave offensively is not determined by their behavior, it is determined only by how you choose to relate to that behavior. Their actions are theirs, you cannot own them, you cannot be them, you can only process them in your mind.”

“Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.”

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

How you choose to interpret people and your relationships makes a huge difference. So much of our relationships may be perceived to happen out there somewhere.

But your underlying frame of mind – for instance an open one or a protective and closed up one – will determine much about your interactions with new people and people you know.

So you really have to go inside. You have to realize that your interpretations from the past are interpretations. Not reality. You have to take a look at your assumptions and expectations and thought habits. Find patterns that may be hurting you (and others). This isn’t easy. Or always pleasant. You may discover that you have had some negative underlying habits of thought for many years.

But to change you have to do it. Instead of just keep looking at yourself as some sort of unmoving and objective observer of the world and reality. A change in you could – over time – change your whole world.

2. Let go of the need for approval.

“People who want the most approval get the least and the people who need approval the least get the most.”

A lot of the actions you take – or do not take – may be because you need approval from other people. When we are young we get grades in school that tells us that we are “good”. This makes it very easy to create a life where you always go looking for the world to give you the next hit of approval. It may be from your family, boss, friends, co-workers and so on.

But this need creates neediness. And the stronger the need the stronger the neediness. And so other people will sense this. And approval may be withheld or used to manipulate you. Or they may just not like your neediness.

The people on the other hand that does not care that much about getting approval often do more of what they want deep inside. They may be considered courageous for instance. So the way they live their lives will gain appreciation and approval from the people around them. It’s a bit counterintuitive.

But it seems to me like this is how things work. If you really want approval in your life try letting go of that need – as best as you can of course, this is not easy – for a while. See what happens. You’ll probably be surprised by how much better you feel inside and the reactions you may get from the outside world.

3. Let go of judgement.

“When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.”

“Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others.”

“Judgement prevents us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances.”

Judging can have a sense of fun to it and make you feel better about yourself as you put someone else down. So why give it up? Here are three reasons:

• People don’t like judgemental people. People don’t like to be judged. So there will be a resistance towards someone who is judgemental.
• Waste of time. You can spend your time doing more fun, constructive and positive things.
• The more you judge people, the more judge yourself. What you see in other people is often what you see in yourself. So if you judge them all the time for their looks or intelligence then you probably judge yourself often about these things too. To let go of judging others can lead you to letting go of judging yourself too. As you lift the limitations you put on others, you lift the limitations you put on yourself.

4. Enjoy the moment.

“When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It’s to enjoy each step along the way.”

One technique that can help you improve your social skills is assuming rapport.

Basically, instead of going into a conversation or meeting nervously and thinking “how will this go?” you take different approach. You assume that you and the person(s) will establish a good connection (rapport).

How do you do that? You simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.

But why does it work? Well, I’d say it works because it puts you in the same mental state as when you are with your friends. When you’re with your friends you are relaxed, positive, in the present moment and without many cares in the world. This is a great place to be socially. You are just enjoying yourself and your moments with your friends without much thought of the past or future. You are just there. The more you can bring yourself into this mental headspace the more fun you will have with people. And the more fun they will have with you.

So try out assuming rapport. And explore other ways to bring yourself back into the present moment through articles like this one or by checking out Eckhart Tolle’s books (two good are A New Earth and Stillness Speaks).

5. People like positive people.

“Unhappiness is within.”

“Simply put, you believe that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.”

Now we are back in the same territory as in the first tip in this article. How you feel is up to you. You control you.

This is important to understand to be able to create and keep a more stable positive attitude. If you let what other people do control – or at least control you too much – then you are on a mental rollercoaster where your thoughts and feelings go up and down all the time. You have to look within to find a great stability to how you think and feel.

I’d say that one of the most attractive qualities a person can have is a positive attitude and energy. It is attractive to people at your job/school, family, friends or just that cute girl/guy in the bar. I think that one of the big things people want in any relationships is positive emotions. People simply want to create a flow back and forth with people where all of you exchange positive emotions and feel good.

Building yourself a more positive attitude will of course not only make you more likeable. It can also improve every other part of your life.

6. You teach them.

“Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.”

This is a very important point and something I think is perhaps often missed by people who want to improve their social lives and make it more positive. They may think “well, I have been so nice towards everyone for the last few months but it doesn’t seem to have changed their behaviour towards me much”.

This is the “nice guy/girl” problem. S/he is very nice but there is no assertiveness. There is no changed feeling within about how you feel you deserve to be treated. You may still be nice just to get approval from other people. You feel the craving need. And as point # 2 explains, you won’t get the approval.

We do to a large extent choose how we want to be treated. How you expect people to treat you can have a big effect on how you allow yourself to act and how people around you view and treat you. If you start creating a role for yourself where you always let people do what they want to you then you may create some pretty destructive and negative things.

You may create an identity for yourself where you get used to always taking whatever anyone doles out. You create a kind of victim identity where you may look happy on the outside but don’t feel so good on the inside. But since you have gotten used to it after a while you may accept it and think that: this is just who I am.

You may create a concept in the minds of the people around you that it’s OK to treat you this way. Either because you seem so positive despite what they are doing so they think it’s OK. Or just because you aren’t saying no and some people may take advantage of that.

Look, you can’t please everyone. I think both Eleanor Roosevelt and Buddha have mentioned something along the lines that whatever you do there will always be people who don’t like what you are doing. And that’s OK. That’s normal.

Going around trying to please everyone at your own expense isn’t healthy though. Or even a realistic thing to attempt. It eats away at you both mentally and physically.

So be nice. Be positive. But make sure you set your own standards, rules and limits too. And remember that you might as well do what you want because there will always be critics.

7. Take responsibility for your social life.

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.”

I really like this quote from Nathaniel Branden’s excellent The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem: “No one is coming”.

You can look for the next big thing that will fix you. Read more blog articles. Read more personal development books. Look for people to help. And yes, some articles or books or people will give you insights that resonate deeply with you. But in the end, if you are an adult then no one is coming. No one is coming to save you. You have to take responsibility for your own life and what happens in it. Other things and people can certainly aid you quite a bit. But you are responsible.

You can go around blaming society or some people for your problems in your social life (or finances or health). You can always find scapegoats to judge and thought that feel better about yourself. For a while. You can look for people that will “fix you”. You can do this for the rest of your life if you like. It won’t change much. Whatever has to be done, it’s you who have to take responsibility and do it.

Yeah, things might always not go your way and you will probably have bad luck from time to time. But you still have to focus on yourself and doing what you can do in whatever situation may arise in the outside world.

8. Like yourself.

“You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.”

Liking yourself is vital to live a happy life. If you like yourself people will of course like hanging out with your more too. A person who likes him/herself, who is positive but also assertive is a lot better than the opposite.

Obvious, yes but the hard thing is how to go about liking yourself more. This is a topic that has filled many books but here are few tips that have helped me.

• Follow the rest of tips above. For example, taking more personal responsibility, working on your attitude and being more assertive consistently will make you feel better about yourself.
• Do the right thing as much as you can. When you do the right thing you lift your own self-esteem. When you don’t do the right thing you tend to stay at the same self-esteem level that you are at the moment (or perhaps even lower it).
• Be appreciative of yourself, don’t just look at your flaws. By appreciating the positive and good things that you think and do you can replace the need for approval from outside sources. You are giving yourself approval instead. This is a lot better than the alternative, because this is an unlimited source that you are in control of.

“Journal writing is a voyage to the interior”
Christina Baldwin

One of the most powerful tools to aid your own personal growth is keeping a journal.

I prefer to do this on my computer and use the Journal by David RM (45 day free demo, 39.95 dollars to buy). It’s easy to use, a simple layout and it also has password protection. You may prefer some kind of the dead tree variety or another program. I prefer the software option. When I have all my thoughts in one piece of software instead of a handful of large notebooks it becomes easier to make connections and find what you are looking for in your archives.

But why is it helpful to take the time to use a journal in the first place? Here are five of my top reasons.

• Increased clarity when solving problems. You can’t hold that many thoughts in your head at once. If you want to solve a problem it can be helpful to write down your thoughts, facts and feelings about it. Then you don’t have to worry your mind about remembering, you can instead use it to think more clearly. Thinking on paper makes it easier to think things through, find valuable details and weak spots in your current problems. This makes it easier find useful solutions to your challenges.
• To remember important events and insights in life. Just recording the important things that happens in your everyday life is fun and fascinating. Or sometimes painful and revealing. If you don’t write it down then the details, the nuances, the emotions may lose some of their power or simply wind up lost forever somewhere in your brain.
• To talk it out with someone. A journal can be good place to vent and unburden yourself. A place to unload mental RAM and get some emotional release. Your journal can be like a conversation partner that you can talk things through with. This might sound silly but this can be very beneficial. It is, in my opinion, one of the most important reasons to keep a journal. If you do it you may find that you become more relaxed and feel lighter after getting things out and down on paper.
• To bring thoughts into reality. If you don’t write things down it can seem as they are not quite real. When you write them down you bring them out into reality. They are not just some vague thoughts floating around in your mind anymore. For example, one thing a lot of very successful self improvement writers – Anthony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar and so on – go on and on about is the importance of having written goals. A written goal brings clarity and focus. It gives you a direction. And if you rewrite your goals over and over you not only reaffirm what your goals are. You may also find new insights that bring more clarity and focus to your goals and life.
• An overview of how things really are. You can use a journal as a way to keep an overview of your thinking over a longer time span and to recognize both positives and negatives in yourself. You may, for example, think of yourself as a healthy person but realise when you read through your journal that you have only been out running four times this month. Or feel like you have a positive attitude, but as you go back over the last few months find a lot of whining and victim thinking. You may also find positive surprises about yourself while rereading and analyzing. The journal allows you to see how things really are. Rather than the way you think they are.

How to Use Your Journal.

Here are a few quick tips that have helped me to use my journal in better way.

Write down your memories while they are fresh.

If something interesting happens I write it down as an entry for that day in my journal. Details and emotions will start to degrade so capture them quickly.

Think about how you want to use it.

The Journal software has more than a space for an entry each day. You can also create entries in a notebook section. I use a few of these to aid my personal growth. The most important is the one I call “Sticking Points”. There I write down problems that come up for me personally time after time. And then I try to come up with solutions.

One example would be that I some days can fall into the pattern being pretty unproductive. The solution I use for this is to set the context for my day quickly after I wake up. I do something important early on in the day and then it becomes more natural to be consistent with that mental state for the rest of the day. And so that day becomes a lot more productive than it would have been otherwise.

Think about in what ways you want to use your own journal. Perhaps your want to use it to analyze your personal finances. Or your relationships to other people. Or to document what you are eating on a day to day basis. Find out what you want answers for.

Actually use it.

You get good stuff out of your journal based on what you put in it. So set off some time, perhaps 5 minutes before going to bed. Or 10 minutes every Sunday night to review your week and write down what happened, what you thought and felt and problems and positive things you discovered. Not matter how you want to use it, use common sense so you don’t fill your journal with every little detail of your life. Or wind up leaving it unused after the first week of initial enthusiasm.

Actually review it.

Remember to go through your archives on a regular basis to explore yourself and also other people more deeply. And to find patterns in your world, self-talk, attitude and in other vital parts of life.

What are your best tips for using your journal in a more helpful way?

One of the hardest things to do in life is to do the right thing. What you think is the right thing. Not what you friends, family, teachers, boss and society thinks is the right thing.

What is the right thing? That’s up to you to decide. Often you have a little voice in your head that tells what the right thing is. Or a gut feeling.

It might tell you to get up from the couch, stop eating those snacks and go to the gym instead. Sometimes you will put on your exercise clothes and go. Sometimes you will not.

It might tell you to stop sulking and feeling like a victim with everything against you and instead look at the opportunities and take action. Sometimes you will. Sometimes you will not.

Now, why should you do the right thing? Here are three excellent reasons:

1. You tend to get what you give.

By doing the right thing you tend to get the same things back. Give value to people, help them and they will often want to help you and give you value in some form. Not everyone will do it but many will. Not always right away but somewhere down the line. Things tend to even out. Do the right thing, put in the extra effort and you tend to get good stuff back. Don’t do it and you tend to get less good stuff back from the world.

2. To raise your self-esteem.

This is a really important point. When you don’t do the right thing you are not only sending out signals out into your world. You are also sending signals to yourself. When you don’t do the right thing you don’t feel good about yourself. You may experience emptiness or get stuck in negative thought loops. Its like you are letting yourself down. You are telling yourself that you cant handle doing the right thing. To not do the right thing is a bit like punching yourself in the stomach.

3. To avoid self-sabotage.

A powerful side effect of not doing the right thing is that you give yourself a lack of deservedness. This can really screw up you and your success. If you don’t do the right thing in your life then you won’t feel like you deserve the success that you may be on your way towards or experiencing right now. So you start to self-sabotage, perhaps deliberately or through unconscious thoughts.

If you on some level don’t think that you are a person who deserves the success you want then you will probably find a way to sabotage that success. You may rationalize it as being about something else or what someone else did. But oftentimes it’s just you standing in your own way. By doing the right thing your can raise your self-esteem and feel like a person who deserves his/her success.

How to do it

Here are a few suggestions that can hopefully help you to do the right thing more often.

Review the reasons why you are doing it.

Whenever you feel unsure about doing the right thing remind yourself of the powerful reasons above (or any other that you can come up with). They might give you that extra push of motivation you need to spring into action.

Go for improvement. Not perfection.

I’m not saying you will do the right thing all the time. I certainly don’t. But I’m saying that we can strive for gradual improvement. If you for instance do the right thing 10 percent of the time right now then try to doing it 20 percent of the time. And then 30 percent. Or you can try to do the right thing at as many opportunities as you find this week. Try some stuff and see works best for you.

My point is just to not get stuck in thinking about perfection or being some kind of saint. This can paralyse you from taking any action at all. Or leave you with negative feelings despite doing the right thing many, many times (since you are still not feeling like you are not quite perfect).

If you seldom do what you feel/think is the right thing now then you will probably not be able to change this completely over the weekend. It might take some time.

Just do it.

The more you think about these things, the more often you tend to come up with reasons to not do it. You need to think but not over think since that often traps you in analysis paralysis. To raise your self-esteem and get a spiral of positive action spinning in your world and with the people around you need to start moving and take action.

Taking the route of doing the right thing takes more effort and can be more painful. It’s often seemingly the harder thing to do.

But when you understand how you are hurting yourself it gets a lot harder to just avoid doing the right thing. The perceived advantages of not doing the right thing – such as it being easier — tend to lose their power and are replaced with a more clearer understanding of what you are doing to yourself and others.

Taking this – perhaps a little less travelled – path is a lot more rewarding than taking the easy way out. Both for you and for the world around you.

Note: This is a guest post provided by wikiHow.

“Begin, be bold and venture to be wise.”
Horace

If you’re shy, hesitant, or passive, you run the risk of leading a boring life marked by routine and unfulfilled goals. Most progress has been led by people who were bold–scientists, political servants, artists, and others who didn’t wait for opportunities; they created opportunities. So if you want to be bold and unstoppable, here are some ways to kick start your momentum.

1. Pretend you’re already bold.

If you were to switch places with somebody who is as bold as bold can be, what would they do in your shoes? If you already know someone who’s bold, imagine how they’d act. If you don’t know anyone like that, think of a character from a movie or book who’s daring and brave. Spend one hour a day or one day a week pretending to be them.

When you do this, go somewhere that people don’t know you and won’t act surprised when you do things that are out of character. Go through the motions and see what happens — you might discover that amazing things happen when you’re bold, and you might be convinced to carry this bold behavior into your everyday life.

2. Make the first move.

Whenever you’re feeling hesitant–especially in your interactions with others–swallow your pride and make the first move. Ask your acquaintance if they’d like to go to the bar down the street for drinks after work. Tell the person you fancy that you’ve got two tickets to a concert and you’d like them to come with you. Give your significant other a big hug and apologize for that time you overreacted a few months ago. Smile and wink at the attractive cashier.

3. Do something unpredictable.

What could you do that would completely surprise the people who know you? Wear high heels? Skydive? Take a dance class? Bold people aren’t afraid of trying new things, and one of the reasons they’re so exciting to be around is that they keep you guessing.

You can start small, perhaps by wearing a color or style of clothing that you don’t normally wear, or visiting a place you normally wouldn’t visit. Eventually, you may get to the point where you entertain ideas that make other people’s eyes widen when you mention them (“Are you serious? White water rafting?” or “You’re kidding me. You want to buy that restaurant on 3rd Street?”).

4. Ask for what you want.

Rather than wait to be recognized for your efforts, or expect someone to consider your needs, step right up to the plate and ask.

Some people feel that asking for things is greedy, selfish, and rude — and it is, if you’re asking for something you don’t deserve. But if someone is withholding something that you’ve rightfully earned, they’re the ones being greedy, selfish, and rude.

Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? They say no. Life goes on.

• Ask for that promotion or pay raise you’ve been waiting (and working) for.
• Ask for a discount. A little haggling can go a long way. The phrase “What can you do for me?” is an easy and powerful way to save money.
• Ask to have your credit card’s annual fee waived.
• Ask a relative, friend, or even a complete stranger for help or advice.
• Ask for clarification if you’re not sure what is expected of you.

5. Take risks.

There’s a difference between being reckless and accepting risks. Reckless people don’t accept risks… they don’t even think about them. A bold person, on the other hand, is well aware of the risks, and has decided to go through with the decision anyway, ready and willing to accept the consequences if things don’t work out.

Think of an athlete who takes risks every day. Are they reckless? No. It’s a measured risk. You might make a mistake; we all do. But inaction can be a mistake as well, one that leads to emptiness and regret. For many people, having taken risks and fallen flat on their faces was far more fulfilling than having done nothing at all.

Likewise, don’t confuse being bold with being aggressive. Aggressiveness often involves imposing your viewpoints or actions on others. Boldness has nothing to do with the people around you; it’s about overcoming your fears and taking action.

Remember that while there’s power in taking on something new, there’s also a greater chance of failure because of your lack of experience. Embrace the failure; it’s not the opposite of success, it’s a necessary component. The opposite of success is sitting still.

6. Rediscover who you are.

Ultimately, boldness has to do with coming from your center, what you believe. It is not about what you do, it is about who you are. If you do not know who you are, you can never be truly bold.

Start really appreciating your uniqueness. Discover what makes you different and then parade it around for all to see. Put flags on it, call attention to it and love yourself for it no matter what others think. That is the heart of boldness.

This guest post was provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Be Bold. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

“Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.”
Emmet Fox

“Before you go and criticize the younger generation, just remember who raised them.”
Unknown

Criticism can be a painful thing. When it’s valid it can also provide you with new insights about yourself and your life.

Many of the tips in this article can be used to learn to handle criticism aimed at you in a better way. But I’d also like to point out that it can be very useful to examine your own reasons for feeling like you have to criticise someone. It can tell you quite a bit about your own life at this moment and what you think about yourself.

1. Understand through experience.

“Don’t criticize what you don’t understand, son. You never walked in that man’s shoes.”
Elvis Presley

“Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.”
Benjamin Franklin

It’s easy to fall into the trap of criticizing things because, well, you feel like it’s wrong. But do you really understand what you are criticising?

From my own experience I have found that one tends to become less critical of things when you have experienced it for yourself and have an understanding. Instead of just knowledge about it.

It’s easy to be the armchair general, knowing what is always right. Especially in hindsight. It makes you feel good and like you are right.

But in the end the credit does not belong to this person.

2. Remember who the credit belongs to.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt

Awesome quote and a thought that you may want to keep in mind. It is of course the wo/man actually out there in the arena who takes the difficult path. The path one doesn’t really have to take. You could just stand on the sidelines criticising which would be easier.

But watching life instead of living it may not be the best option. Because anytime you are on the sidelines just watching you are probably not doing what you deep down think is the right thing to do. Such behaviour makes you not feel good about yourself or your life.

3. Keep your focus on what’s helpful for you.

“The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews.”
William Faulkner

If you’re in the arena you are doing, failing, learning and repeating that all over again and again. You doing something you think is worthwhile.

It’s helpful to use your focus selectively. If you look at the sides of the arena you may see people booing and some people cheering you on. But to really get the results you want you have to focus. Focus on what you are doing in the arena. Keep your eyes on the ball.

The thing is if you take in the positive voices and let them define you then you have to take in the negative voices too.

How can you get past that problem? You can listen to them all, but don’t have a need or craving deep inside for any of them. Don’t seek yourself on other people’s opinions. Instead, validate yourself by focusing on the positive things you think and do. And get to know who you really are, not what other people think you are.

My mindset for praise – that I try to stick to as much as I can – is that it’s cool and I appreciate it. It’s great to get praise, but I seldom get overly excited about it and jump and down shouting enthusiastically.

A great upside of this mindset is that when you receive the opposite – negative criticism – you can often observe it calmly without too much wild, negative emotions blocking the way. This allows you to appreciate that piece of criticism too (if there is something to learn from it).

Basically this mindset is about not caring too much about what other people think. If you do then you easily become pretty needy and let others control how you feel. Both how good and bad you feel.

4. Don’t accept the gift.

“A man interrupted one of the Buddha’s lectures with a flood of abuse. Buddha waited until he had finished and then asked him, “If a man offered a gift to another but the gift was declined, to whom would the gift belong?”

“To the one who offered it,” said the man.

“Then,” said the Buddha, “I decline to accept your abuse and request you to keep it for yourself.”

Simply don’t accept the gift of a criticism. You don’t have to. Then it still belongs to the person who offered it.

This is of course easier said than done. To have everyone own their own feelings and opinions instead of letting them be a part of you or something you feel responsible for isn’t easy.

Still, one can do it if one is aware of what Buddha describes. You can then choose to decline the gift rather than thinking that you have to accept it. Now, this might not work every time, especially if you are feeling very emotional and vulnerable. Still, it can be helpful to keep in mind.

This also ties into the previous tip. When you really need and crave other people’s positive – and perhaps negative – opinions to define yourself it becomes hard to reject the gift since you don’t see/don’t want to see it as something separate from yourself. You are all wrapped up in it.

5. Who are you talking about?

“When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical.”
Unknown

When you criticize someone what does that say about you? And when someone is criticising you who are they really revealing?

If someone makes a personal attack or just let’s the destructive words flow then remember that criticism isn’t always about you. Criticism can be a way for the one critiquing to release pent up anger, frustration or jealousy. Or a way to reinforce that his/her viewpoint or belief is the right one. Or s/he may have habit of getting others involved emotionally – baiting them – to build a negative spiral, an argument/fight or to get attention. It’s about him/her. Not about something you did.

It can have a calming effect to remember this. And to remember that the other person is still human and might just be having a bad day or week.

This does of course not just go for “the other people” out there. It goes for you and me too. Whenever you feel a need to be critical, ask yourself why. Whenever you have been critical towards someone who didn’t deserve it remember that you are hurting yourself and reinforcing your current state of mind and self-esteem level by this behaviour.

6. There is a better choice.

“I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.”
Charles Schwab

So, what can one do instead of criticising someone to get them to improve? One way is by lifting them up instead. By focusing on what they are doing well. And on how they can improve, rather how they are screwing things up.

As Schwab says, and as you probably have noticed in your own life, the spirit of for instance the workplace can have a great effect on your on your own mood, productivity, enthusiasm and motivation.

Energy flows where attention goes. So whatever is focused on – criticism or lifting people up – will expand and become stronger. One may think that harsh criticism may help and get results. It may just bring people down though and pollute the emotional environment.

7. Accept that it will always be there.

“Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing”
Aristotle

Since criticism often is a form of self-expression for the one critiquing or based in a lack of understanding there is little you can do to escape it. You can of course minimize your interactions with highly negative and critical people. Or keep your focus on what you are doing rather than the critics.

But whatever you do some people will probably feel a need to criticise.

Whatever you do there will always be people who don’t like what you are doing.

And that’s OK. That’s normal.

As Eleanor Roosevelt says:

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”