Learn to Tune Out the Noise: How to Deal with Critics

Critics are a part of our everyday lives, and we need to learn how to focus on the feedback that matters

People never fail to give unwanted opinions about a person’s life choices. But small business owners and entrepreneurs especially face lots of criticism from others. Whether out of jealousy, lack of understanding, or true concern, people love to tell you that what you’re doing is risky or that you’re not doing it right.

The only way to avoid criticism? To do nothing. And that’s never a good solution.

The good news is that you can ignore the critics altogether. Isn’t that a pleasant thought? You have the power within you to tune others out. But remember, there are certain instances when you should listen to feedback if it’s true and valuable.

Learning when feedback is valuable

The first step to determine if the criticism is valuable or not is to have a clear grasp of your vision, both personally and with your business. This allows you to decide which pieces of criticism are related to your goals or ability to run a successful business. For example, if someone points out that you aren’t the best at managing money and that maybe it’s why you aren’t making any profit month-to-month, perhaps you could take a step back and say, this person is right.

You could then hire outside help in that area. This is an example of how some criticism can actually help you better understand yourself and why you’re facing challenges.

One way to test criticism is to ask yourself: Is this comment strictly based on opinion, or is this factual, measurable, or proven?

Create growth goals

Creating goals is one good way to stay on track with your mission and tune out unhelpful negativity. Come up with both personal and professional goals, and include ways that you’d like to grow each month.

For example, maybe you are a little bit too sensitive to people’s thoughts about what you’re doing, letting it keep you up at night or making decisions that you would not usually make, so a personal growth goal could be to engage a “let it go” attitude more often. To take a deep breath instead of becoming anxious about a comment.

Keep a journal of the instances when you didn’t let it go and when you did. You’ll start monitoring your behavior more and will thus be able to change outcomes at the moment.

Stop trying to please everyone

As we touched on above, if you have the mentality that everyone has to love you and everyone has to agree with you, you will constantly be disappointed. This ideal is pretty much impossible, as everyone has their own unique background and perspective about the world and what is good and bad.

Putting yourself out there in whatever venture you’re pursuing is a risk for this very reason. You’re saying, I’m doing this thing I care about, and some will like it, and some won’t, and that’s ok.

It’s easier said than done, of course, but try to let things roll off your back that won’t really move you forward.

Don’t lash out

Especially in our extreme digital culture, it’s easy for haters to comment and troll and make producers feel terrible about themselves.

It’s also easy for us to respond poorly to these negative comments, whether we enter days-long Twitter battles or stress ourselves silly over one little blog comment. When someone online angers or hurts you this way, it’s easy to convince yourself that it’s fine to bite back because you’ll never actually meet the person on the other end.

But this behavior does not exude professionalism, and it just makes you think about it more and more. It will make you angrier and angrier as you’re typing out that reply and telling your friends about it.

Also remember that your response will be visible, too, so you don’t want to hurt your brand by letting your anger, or you need to be right, get the best of you. As your business grows, brand reputation is going to grow in importance, and it requires you to protect it with your actions, however small.

Instead, don’t do anything if you get a negative comment. Don’t reply to it if it isn’t constructive, don’t delete it; just let it go. You’ll be able to brush off these comments more and more as you practice tuning them out.

It’s important to know yourself and your vision so that you know which points of feedback could help you and which are just noise. Remember to uphold your brand’s professionalism and tact when dealing with critics, and stop trying to make everyone happy, because it’s not going to happen.

Paper Napkin Wisdom has many other tips to offer you, based on conversations with leading CEOs and entrepreneurs. Check out our blog or podcast to learn more about the pillars we stand for.