Monday, March 06, 2006

Open to Feedback

My daily Om horoscope had this to say to me today:

We can make the most of people’s feedback by listening to what they have to say. It can be easy to become defensive when people offer their opinions about our ideas. Their feedback tends to taken on magnified importance, and we can begin to see their approval—or lack of approval—as acceptance or rejection. If we can remain detached and remind ourselves that their opinion may not necessarily have any bearing on what’s true for us, we can take what’s best about their feedback and leave the rest. People have valuable insight to offer if we can hear what they are saying and not worry about what they think of us. Be open to valuable feedback, and your ideas will grow from being exposed to people.

What do you think? Is this easy for you to do?

12 comments:

Lizzie said...

It definitely depends on who is giving the feedback (and what they're saying of course!) I'll admit I'm overly sensitive to criticism when it comes from certain people, especially if I think their motives are less than sincere. For the most part I think I'm pretty open to feedback, but there's always room for improvement, I suppose. (That's not an invite to criticism - j/k ;-))

Anonymous said...

Wow... you have no idea how I needed to hear this today.

Anonymous said...

Easy? Heavens no, it's never easy to have faith in yourself. It's horribly hard but so rewarding.

Amanda said...

I unfortunately really listen to feedback and take it all in. I have a hard time sorting it out to determine what I actually want. Ugg.

Claire said...

If it's not what I want to hear- i.e., something I probably know already, but am not ready to deal with, it's really hard to take in.

I thought of my mom when I first read this post and wished she could take things less personally. But then I tend to take what she says more personally than I should too.

I take feedback better when it's a mix of positive and negative (and try to give it that way). If it's all you're doing these things wrong, then I just feel like a f**kup, and it's harder to take anything useful from it.

Depends a lot of who's giving the feedback, on what, and how much confidence I have in myself in that arena.

hannahhas said...

I think that I/ we are pretty open to it... isn't that what our comments are about after all? I mean you have received at least one comment that I would have immediately deleted, but you cooly responded. I think that’s awesome.. I wouldn’t be that chill about it. I worry that perhaps that might be the case for "real life" as well...

Bre said...

When it comes to work and my Masters program - I'm a feedback junkie. I want to know what you thought about everything so that I can change things, scrap things, repeat things, or alter things.... I'm a perfectionist in that way. When it comes to my personal life, if it isn't positive I don't want to hear it. I don't know why that is, and I'm sure that there are times when "negative" feedback about my personal life would be helpful - but I'm very bad at looking at it through the same filters I use at work!

Poz Mikey said...

Sometimes it is easy for me to hear, other times it isn't but I may need to hear anyway. XXOO M

Gary said...

It's one of the hardest things to do. But you are correct in saying that it is something worth acomoplishing. I've been working on that a long time. I'm still working on it. Thanks for the reminder.

Anonymous said...

i only want feedback if it's positive. tell me i've done something good for once! everyone is way too negative around me lately. i get enough of the downer info....

Bill said...

The thing that strikes me about feedback, which makes it a bit dubious, is that it sometimes has nothing to do with us. I've often found myself commenting on someone's post and realizing later that I wasn't really commenting on their post. Something in their post struck a nerve, reminding me of something else, and my comment had more to do with that than what they had actually posted.

I think it's similar in all feedback. Sometimes it is worthwhile, and often well intentioned, but quite often it has more to do with the person providing the feedback than with us.

Nihilistic said...

I always ask for feedback and usually don't take it.