Sometimes Feedback Stinks

Intro Music:
Welcome to An Owner’s Guide for Your Life, the podcast that combines psychology, coaching, common sense and fun. I’m Tracey Browning, an entrepreneur, life coach, and lover of people. Now let’s talk about how to live love, make money, and change the world.

Tracey: Hey, I’m glad you’re here. This is episode 23, and I’ve got a confession to make. I’ve just discovered I have three one star ratings on Apple podcasts.

Three people took the time to give me the lowest rating they could give. Now, I’ve got twice as many five star ratings, and I’ve got five people who took much more of their own precious time to write out a review of my podcast. And those mean a lot more to me. A whole lot more. Some podcasts never get any ratings or reviews, so I really appreciate what I’ve gotten, but the negative ones stink.

Now, I don’t know who the people are. I don’t know why they rated me this way, but I’m willing to talk about what it feels like to get negative feedback, how it feels to be criticized.

I’m not going to make any bones about it. I really don’t like this. It doesn’t feel good, because even though I know it’s completely unrealistic and it’s impossible, a teeny, tiny little part of me honestly hopes that everybody will like me, and it hurts when they don’t.

Now those ratings don’t give me any information I can work with.
There’s no suggestions for improvement. Even if I wanted to consider changing something, I don’t know anything except that they rated me one star, so yeah, I take this with a grain of salt.

But I want to share with you what it’s like and what I did, so maybe it can help you the next time you get criticized, because guess what happens in life. Negative things happen. We get criticized. We’ve all got to deal with it.

Now I haven’t checked my Apple dashboard in a while, and I really just was not expecting this. So first I was stunned, and I just let that feeling wash over me. I literally shook my head in disbelief. Now that feels like something you read in a novel- “She shook her head in disbelief.” But that’s what I did. Like a dog shaking it off, trying to shake the bad feeling off and it didn’t quite work.

Anyway, then I felt a little bit embarrassed and anxious, and I remember thinking this actual thought. “I just don’t measure up”. Measure up to who and what? I don’t know.

It doesn’t have to make sense or be clear, these thoughts, to elicit emotions, but it’s important to let our feelings be felt. So I gave myself a few minutes to just kind of let my body process that adrenaline rush. Not a good adrenaline rush, mind you, but an adrenaline rush. So my stomach knotted up and my body tensed, and my heart just kind of really, my heart hurt. Oh, you hurt my heart.

And then I told my husband and, this is serendipity folks, right here. I had brownies coming out of the oven right then. So I sat and ate a brownie with caramel and walnuts. It’s like my favorite thing. So instead of dwelling on, ugh, this feels bad and I’m kind of discouraged because this is not the easiest process- putting a podcast out into the public.

Then I sat and said the names of people that I know that love me. I said them out loud and thought about them and pictured their faces and that I knew they loved me. And then I reached out to a few people that I knew would be encouraging because I needed a little extra encouragement there.

After I did all of that then, and only then, did I let myself think about, what can I learn from this? I wasn’t ready to learn from it until I was sure that my heart was okay. And that I’d let my feelings kind of roll through. If I had done it earlier, the negativity would have just, like, rolled me under like the big waves in the ocean. Do you know what I’m saying?

So I hope that my sharing this experience can help you.
And here’s my overall takeaway.

Now that I’ve digested my brownie and gotten encouragement and said all the names of people I know that love me. If kindness and positivity like I share on the podcast, if that stirs up negativity, then good golly, the world needs to hear a whole lot more from me!

So look out now.

I want to end with a favorite quote from Teddy Roosevelt’s man in the arena speech.

“It’s not the critic who counts. It’s 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, 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 so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Dare greatly, friends.

For a transcript of this episode or for more information about life and mindset coaching, visit my website https://www.tbrowning.com/.