Handling Criticism
“Criticism is information that will help you grow.”
— Hendrie Weisinger
I was outraged at one point with my current boss. He had criticized the hell out of me for long time and I exploded in the end. I could not take it any longer after series of months that I spent half of time outside the country filming.
There was so much anger behind his criticism, partly it came from other battles he has with other departments in the company, and it was poisoning my mental state because it was poured only on me.
He apologized, excusing himself that it was partly because of the way he was brought up. But he silently said,
“I don’t believe in being nice to each other at work, I don’t believe in giving fake compliments to each other. When you look back at your career, you will be thanking those who criticised you, because that helped you to grow”
Few months later today, I was scolded about my camera work by this guy.
I used an iPhone, not the reason I got scolded, to film an aerial shot of an island, Malta from the plane.
But when the director looked at what I had filmed, he said, “No, no, no, no, where is the sea in this? Why do some of your shots have the engine of the plane included, are you trying to tell a story of engine?”
He kept on going by questioning my skills as a cameraman, “This is rubbish” and pointed out that I need to be more aware about what I film, think about what narration goes on top of the video. His opinion was expressed in a loud manner at a dinner table, in front of other colleagues.
He wanted more sea to be in the shot rather than the land. Because the narration was going to be “Malta, a country in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea” Therefore, the image has to include the sea to support the narration.
I wanted to kick myself because I had taken a photo with my iphone just for myself actually;

“While we would love to have no criticism, probably if we had no critique, we wouldn’t be doing anything meaningful.” — Erwin McManus
That picture above was what he wanted, but as a movie clip.
On the surface I looked calm, but underneath it, I was in pain because, m
an, I don’t know how many times over the last 3 years I have been criticized about my work and felt miserable. Am I ever good enough? I had felt quite down about my lack of skills.
Focusing too much on criticism will stop you. That is what I recalled today after today. Criticism has to be handled well in order for you to be persistent and continuing to improve.
But these days, I don’t feel too bad as I used to. Making mistakes is part of improving. And I am glad that I get criticized more than my colleagues.
“Pretty words are not always true, and true words are not always pretty.” — Aiki Flinthart
You need criticism in order to grow. Never give up because of criticism.
Originally published at www.crafting-creativity.net.
