Dealing with Criticism: How I Turned a Nasty Barb Into Gold

Recently I re-launched my signature mini-course, Creative Sandbox 101. I was happy with my conversion rate (the percentage of people who signed up), but I sent an email to everyone who didn’t purchase CS101, because I was curious what went into people’s decisions not to buy.

The response to that email has been HUGE. Almost half of my subscribers opened the email (that’s the power of a grabby subject line!), and over 100 sent me a personal reply via email.

(And yes, I sent a personal thank you email back to all of them. Because that’s how I roll. :) )

The responses have been very illuminating. I wasn’t the least surprised that most people said that time/overwhelm, or a schedule conflict was their biggest obstacle, and that the next most common obstacle was money. These are the default reasons everyone gives, but in truth time and money are never the real issue; the real issue is priorities.

“I can’t spare the time” and “I can’t spare the money” are almost always stand-ins for “I didn’t want it badly enough.”

But analyzing my launch is not the real purpose of this post, which is how I turned a nasty barb into gold.

A lot of emails have been very encouraging and positive, too, sharing how much they love my writing, my podcast, etc.

Then this note landed in my inbox:

Because you [sic] haven’t ever seen you follow through with any of your big plans. I can’t possibly use you as a mentor.

Ouch.

That was my first response. I could literally feel myself flush with shame.

She nailed me right in a core fear: that I’m a loser who never follows through.

Thankfully, though, I’ve done enough work on dealing with criticism that I did not get stuck there!

First, I asked myself if this was true–is it true that I’ve never followed through on big plans?

HELL NO!

I confess that there are big plans I have not followed through on—writing my book being one.

But there are LOTS of big plans that I HAVE followed through on:

• Co-teaching a creativity workshop in Istanbul
• My Create & Incubate Retreat
• Doing house concerts, including performances & workshops in different states!
• Launching my podcast
• Using my looper in live performance (click here for some examples, or follow me on SoundCloud here)
• Doing a stand-up comedy showcase
• Every single class and workshop I’ve ever offered
• My Erase the Chaos Toolkit

And that’s just off the top of my head.

Then I got curious.

Years ago I started a separate newsletter to keep people apprised of my progress on the book I was working on, and I was curious if that was the big plan I hadn’t followed through on that she was thinking about. Was this woman on the mailing list for my book?

So I did a search in my Gmail inbox, and found another email from the same woman, which landed in my box after I’d given a free webinar before the last session of a three-month long program I used to offer.

In that email, she wrote:

I was unable to make the live call because of the time — 6:00–7:15 EST is just not convenient. However, I did listen to your Intro, and Melissa, your style is just not mine. There wasn’t a lot of substance in what you had to say, and I think I was looking for something concrete.

Wow! I had forgotten about that email!

It really stung at the time. THIS time, though, it sort of made me feel good to find it.

Why?

Because those two emails together create context. This woman is so clearly NOT my Right People, that I can file anything she has to say in the “Not Worth Getting Upset Over” file.

I can LEARN from her barbs — I DO have a tendency to get super-excited about big plans, and then share them way too early, before I’m truly ready to commit to them, and this is something I’d like to change.

But her OPINIONS are not worth paying attention to, because she is not “in the arena,” as Brené Brown would say, inspired by this quote from a speech Theodore Roosevelt delivered in 1910:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, [emphasis mine] whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

No, this woman is not in the arena, AND she is so clearly NOT my Right People!

I have no idea why this woman was still on my mailing list (and I’ve since removed her), except to be a Negative Nelly.

The upshot of this story is that using the tools for dealing with criticism REALLY WORKS. I wanted to share this story as a sort of case study.

The more visible we get, the more feedback we’ll get — both positive and negative.

The answer is not to stay hidden!

The answer is to learn how to manage those negative barbs so they don’t make you bleed to death.

It’s doable! 😊