[Video] Flip It: Are You Letting Your Critics Win?

When I was a freshman in college, I was accepted into an advanced creative writing class. I admit, at the time I was pretty brash and full of myself (and not in a good way) and definitely deserved to be taken down a peg or two.

And, that’s precisely what happened. The creative writing professor didn’t care for me, gave me a C, and told me it was because I didn’t have much talent as a writer.

Now, for years, I would imagine telling this story on these national platforms, like Oprah, after I was a huge success, of course.

There was only one problem.

I had stopped writing.

Oh, I still had fantasies of becoming a famous author. And I often dreamed of telling this story as a revenge fantasy. But, in terms of putting the work in and actually sitting my butt down in a chair and writing, I wasn’t doing a darn thing.

And it wasn’t for lack of trying. I just didn’t have any ideas. I was completely blocked.

So, why was that? What happened to me?

Well, what I see now is I didn’t allow myself to process my emotions.

I jumped right into “Well, I’ll show her” and “Every famous author was told he or she didn’t have talent” mode, and skipped right over the part where I have a good cry because my feelings are hurt and maybe throw a temper tantrum while I’m at it. (Alone of course. This is not about creating a lot of drama and having people feel sorry for me. This is simply me behind closed doors feeling my emotions.)

I can remember back then feeling out of sorts, like I was a bottle of carbonated fizzy soda all blocked up with nowhere to go. I was literally feeling myself block my creativity, even though I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing at the time. I didn’t understand how important it was to feel my emotions and let them out before I could settle back down and do the hard work of creating.

So, now let’s talk about you. I get it. Being criticized is never fun. It’s even less fun now when social media is lurking right around the corner and people can say all sorts of nasty and hateful things for the world to read.

I understand. You should check out some of my reviews on Amazon. Ooof — a few are brutal. One even compares my writing to a 6-year-old. So, yeah. It happens.

But am I going to let those nasty-minded mean people stop me from getting my message out to those who are looking for it? Absolutely not. In fact, you can check out my fiction brand right here.

And you shouldn’t let them stop you either.

Which is why taking care of yourself is more important than ever.

If you don’t allow yourself to feel bad when you’re criticized, OR if you’re not allowing yourself to feel the fear you might be criticized if you get too big, you’re never going to allow yourself to get big enough to be criticized.

And, if you do that, who wins? You or your would-be critics?

The best part? Eventually the critics will lose their power to hurt you. Honestly. If you do the work and feel the feelings, no matter what they are, you’ll stop being triggered.

And then, who is the real winner?