You can’t avoid the critics, and why would you want to?

Trying to avoid the critics is like actively avoiding the best version of yourself. When you attract the critics it’s undoubtedly because you’re actually having an impact and saying something worthwhile. Making a few waves is the natural result of sailing out of safe harbour and going for something.

When you come out and stand for something, tell people what you think no matter how genuine your intentions, how generous your spirit or how well crafted your message, if it’s got a bit of something about it, there will always be a few who won’t like it.

It will push their buttons and inevitably some of them will push back at you. When they do, it hurts and you notice. Even if there are just a handful of naysayers in a sea of raving supporters, you can bet your life it’s the critics that you will remember not the fans. It’s just the way we are wired. Survival instincts honed over millennia make us tuned in to threat, the emotional pain of feeling different or not belonging or going against the grain is built in. We are conditioned through pain not to repeat certain behaviours so our natural response is to contract, away from risk away from pain and away from the unknown.

It might be appealing to play it safe, to keep things on a comfortable even keel and not rock the boat and, some of the time, we all need to do that for balance and sanity.

But there is a cost to the short term gain of feeling safe, and that cost is in our passion for our purpose and our hunger for our work. It affects our creativity and ultimately our confidence. We stop innovating and become stagnant. We stop falling, so we stop learning and when we stop learning part of us checks out and work becomes a little less worthwhile.

Forged metal is stronger, the act of going in and out of the fire, being tempered reduces its brittleness. The process is deliberate, controlled, purposeful and consistently works. In the same way critique, feedback and the unexpected is the fire to your inner metal. You need it for strength. You need it to do the work you were made for.