The amount of criticism you're able to handle is proportionate to the level of leadership you'll attain. Join Dr Demartini and learn how to find ways to transform judgements and criticisms into a productive force for change. Move beyond allowing inner and outer, criticisms to define you, and discover how they can be productive in mastering your life.

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If I'm seeing it as something painful and I'm wanting to avoid it,

and I'm now addicted to praise,

well the addiction to praise can make you lose your identity and subordinate

yourself to people you look up to who support you all the time,

and you can lose your identity that way.

Some people think that, you know, criticism is a bad thing.

I don't see it as a bad thing or a good thing.

I just see it as an event in life that we face and participate in.

And so every human being has

a set of priorities set of values that they live by,

things that are most important to least important in their life.

Whenever we perceive that somebody's challenging us

and potentially interfering with the fulfillment of what we value most,

we tend to go into our sympathetic response.

And sympathetic is a autonomic response for fight or flight. We tend to withdraw

because it represents a challenge, like a predator attacking us, we withdraw,

it's an instinct to avoid.

And when somebody supports us and gives us the impression it's gonna help us

get what we want,

we get an impulse towards something and it activates the parasympathetic nervous

system. And we want to digest it and rest with it and relax.

And so we have this autonomic response to things that challenge or support our

values, criticism or praise, support or challenge, nice or mean,

kind or cruel, positive or negative, whatever you wanna put the terms to it.

Now, anytime somebody challenges what we value,

we tend to wanna kind of kick it back. We'll criticize them if they do.

So, anytime you perceive yourself being criticized in your life,

what that really means is that somehow what you're doing,

in their perception, is challenging their values.

Now that may be that you're expecting them to do something outside their values,

what's important,

or you may be wanting them to do something that goes against what they want to

do.

And the other thing that makes people criticize is you being puffed up above

them. If I walked in a room and you

said to me that, oh, Dr. Demartini, you're a lovely guy,

and started praising me in some fashion,

if I humbled myself below what you perceived me to be and was really

humble, you'd keep lifting me up and saying praising things.

But if all of a sudden I turned around and said, well,

you have no idea how amazing I am and everything else.

And just puffed myself up and aggrandized myself above what you perceive me to

be, you'll go, huh? And you'll cut me down.

So praise and reprimand or support and challenge or praise and

criticism or whatever are homeostatic mechanisms to get people into fair

exchange and into equilibrium.

So anytime you do something that challenges somebody's value,

that's an assumption of sort of a disrespect,

not caring enough to find out what's important to them and help them get it.

And so that's a normal response.

The criticism back is trying to guide you to learn how to more effectively

communicate what you value in terms of what they value, respectfully.

And anytime you're arrogant,

talking down to them and expecting them to live in your values,

they're gonna get criticism because they feel like they're not being respected

again and they feel like you're trying to get them to be somebody they can't be.

So whenever you get criticism ask these two questions,

these are very good questions to ask.

What are you doing that's challenging their values that they'd want to criticize

you? I've been involved in human behavior teaching 49 years.

And I've had people, you know, say to me,

my mother always criticizes me or my father criticizes me or my best friend or

my husband's critical all the time.

And I hear this exaggerated subjectively biased distortion sometime 'it's all

the time', and they exaggerate how often it's happening. It's happening.

No doubt, at times. But sometimes it's been turned into 'all the time'.

And then I ask 'em a question.

So what are you doing that's challenging their values that would make them want

to do that? No, they just do that. They're just critical people. No,

they're not.

They're human beings with a set of values that you've subjectively biased your

interpretation and have a confirmation bias on how many times they've done it

and a disconfirmation bias on how few times they did the opposite, praised you.

And so you now have a label on them and then you think, well,

they're always criticizing you and the reality is

whenever you're challenging their values, they're going to, because

you're not respecting and communicating in their values.

And anytime you are thinking you're superior to them or

any way puffed up in any way beyond what they think you deserve,

they're gonna bring you down.

And them bringing you down into authenticity and leveling

the playing field actually is a way of getting the communication more

respectful. When you look up to somebody you'll stop and think before you speak,

when you look down on somebody you'll speak before you think.

If you look across, you'll think and speak, respectfully.

And so criticism is an essential component of communication that goes on in

society and in relationships to try to get people into equilibrium.

The second you think your spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend or partner or

whatever is getting an upper hand and getting cocky and getting above,

you'll automatically bring them back down, pride before the fall.

And criticism is an essential component to level the playing fields to enhance

the communication so there's respect again. And whenever we're puffed up,

that's a persona, a facade that's not you.

And what happens is when they're criticizing you, getting you back down,

if you interpret it wisely, they bring you back down,

it's getting you back into authenticity.

Criticism has a very important component in society.

It can be very essential for doing it.

Now we have this fantasy and this moral hypocrisy that we're supposed to always

be nice and never be mean and always be kind and never be cruel and always be

positive, never negative. I've never met a person that lives that way.

I've heard of that ideal, Alasdair MacIntyre basically said that, you know,

we have all these morals that people are supposed to live by, but nobody does,

and it's a fantasy that you're gonna get a person to be one sided. In fact,

the number one unrealistic expectation on human beings is to expect them to be

one-sided people. If I said to you, you're always nice, never mean, always kind,

never cruel, your own BS meter would go off and go, not really.

I could think of times when I was pretty tough.

If I said you were always mean and never nice, the other way. you'd also think,

no, that's not it. But if I said to you, sometimes you're nice,

sometimes you're mean, sometimes you can be nice as a cat,

sometimes mean as a tiger, you may go, yeah, that's me.

We automatically know tha,

our intuition is always guiding us back into that center of authenticity.

And so if we get puffed up and we are not,

and we're challenging their values and expecting them to live in our values,

they're gonna be critical of us.

So when they're doing that it's feedback and it doesn't have to be a hurt.

The only reason why criticism will hurt is because you're addicted to praise.

And when you're living in your highest values and you're living most

meaningfully and most fulfilled,

you're most objective and most resilient and adaptable to praise and reprimand.

You don't get highly you know, enamored with praise.

You don't get highly rejected by criticism.

You just allow them both to occur because you need them. In fact,

some of the gold medalists that I've worked with and some of the top athletes

I've worked with and celebrities and things that I've gotten to work with,

when they're really, they ask for criticism, they're not avoiding it.

They're asking for it.

They're looking for quality feedback to help them master their skill.

So criticism is not a bad thing, or praise is not a good thing.

Sometimes praise is a facade and it's interesting,

we can praise something when we're infatuated with

got more positive than negatives and support more than challenge,

and we're blind to the downsides and the challenges are about to happen.

So both of those by themselves, are incomplete.

I always say praise plus reprimand.

praise plus criticism, is what builds respect. You know,

if you look at your own marriage, any length of time you've had it,

you'll see that they praise and reprimand you and criticize you. They do both.

And if you get cocky, they'll bring you down. If you get humbled,

they'll lift you up. I learned that when I was in profession,

when I started my professional career years ago,

I noticed that when I was really puffed up and thought, wow,

I'm amazing you know,

and touch me and you're gonna heal kind of things and I'd be a little

exaggerating myself, I'd come home and my wife would nail me. I thought,

what a toxic woman.,

What she was doing is getting me off my pedestal from my exaggerated self and

bringing me back in equilibrium. And then when I'd have a really low day, oh,

what a day I had, then she'd lift me up and I started thinking, Hmm,

that's interesting.

I read this book called toxic relationships and

And I thought,

that book is trying to give people the impression you're supposed to be all

positive all the time. And it's not true.

And the book was misleading people into thinking that you're supposed to get a

one sided world. There are no monopoles out there. Life has both sides.

And the more we're addicted to praise, the more painful the criticism.

But the more we understand that criticism is trying to help us become authentic,

in fact,

everything that goes on in our life is attempting to get us out of our personas

and masks and facades that we wear and get us back into the center,

where we learn how to have respectful,

equitable communication with other people.

So criticism is an essential component. So when somebody's criticizing ask,

what am I doing that's challenging their values and where am I puffed up?

And where am I addicted to its opposite, praise?

Cause if I get the criticism and I say thank you for that,

then I understand what it's doing. It's helping me be authentic and thank you.

But if I'm seeing it as something painful and I'm wanting to avoid it,

and I'm now addicted to praise,

well the addiction to praise can make you lose your identity and subordinate

yourself to people you look up to to who support you all the time,

and you can lose your identity that way, you can subordinate.

Sometimes the people we look up to, you know,

that support our values that we become dependent on keeps us juvenilely

dependent and dependent on them.

And then we try to sacrifice what's important to us to try fit into what they

are. A lot of people fit into the herd instinct because of that.

They're afraid of rejection.

So they're trapped trying to put on a facade to fit into the group instead of

stand out. When I ask people how many wanna make a difference?

Everybody puts their hand up. How are you gonna make a difference fitting in?

How are you gonna make a difference when everybody's,

you're doing whatever it takes to get praised instead of allowing yourself to be

challenged? You know, if you're not being crucified,

you're probably not on purpose in life, not authentic in life,

because there's going to be both supporters and challenges in your life.

You need both support and challenge to grow. If you had nothing but support,

you'd stay juvenilely dependent. If you had nothing but challenge,

you become precociously independent.

You put the two together in perfect balance and you grow maximal,

maximum growth and development occurs at the border of support and challenge,

praise and criticism. So I don't see one as good and bad.

I think that's foolish.

I see them both essential for our homeostasis and our authentic stuff.

So I know if I'm putting myself down,

I guarantee you people will start lifting me up and lighten up.

And if I go up above, they'll put me down.

The tall poppy syndrome is a good example.

You get cocky and arrogant and people knock you down. Imagine going to

the medals, the academy awards,

something like that and somebody gets up there and they win an award and

somebody says, about time I got that,

I've deserved it for years and you finally give it to me, walks off arrogantly.

Booo, people will criticize.

But if they go in there and they humble themselves and thank all the people

that's helped them get where they are and minimize themselves,

people will give 'em a standing ovation.

That's nature doing its job to help people become authentic.

So praise and reprimand are both essential in the journey.

So anytime you sit down and get criticism,

you may also want to ask this question.

This comes from my Breakthrough Experience program,

my signature program I've done 1138 times around the world,

and it's from the Demartini Method. So you ask this question;

oka when they're critical of you and you see them

being critical, you ask, okay, what specific trait, action,

inaction do I see them doing that I dislike most I see them displaying?

Okay. Verbal criticism, arrogant, verbal criticism. Great.

Now I go and ask myself, go to a moment, John,

where and when you have displayed verbal criticism,

displayed that specific trait action inaction to somebody in your life?

And you go, okay. I verbally criticized my son.

I verbally criticized my daughters. I've verbally criticized my spouse.

My girlfriend later, when my spouse died, I verbally criticized my staff.

I verbally criticized the students.

And I start listing all the places where I've done that. And I go, well,

I've done that to the same degree,

quantitatively qualitatively as I see in them,

the only reason they're reminding me and why I'm wanting to avoid this criticism

is cuz it's reminding me of something I feel kind of ashamed of myself because

I'm thinking I'm not supposed to be that way, which is an illusion.

And I think I've caused some pain in other people when in fact that I've

actually been leveling the playing field and helping people become authentic

with it.

So if I stop and I reflect and find out where I do it a hundred percent to the

same degree, that softens it, that makes me realize, well,

who am I judging them for? They're reflecting me.

And then if I go at that moment, when they're doing that,

go to the moment where they did that,

where they actually verbally criticized me, how does it help me?

How did it help me in that moment? What was the benefit of that?

Did it humble me a bit? Make me self-reflect? Did it make me think?

Did it make me study harder? Did it make me go and do my work?

Make me check my references? How did it help me?

If I sit down and ask what the benefits are until the benefits equal the

drawback. And did it make me aware of how I was communicating? Was I arrogant?

Was I puffed up? If I look really carefully,

I will find that there's many advantages and benefit to them doing it as

what I thought there was disadvantages,

and I only withdrew from it and didn't like it because I thought there was

downsides. Once I see the benefits of it, I realize, thank you.

And then it has no power of me.

We don't have to be victims of what other people do to us.

We can take our perception, decisions,

and actions and change them and turn it into opportunity.

The reason I'm taking this time to talk about this topic is because many people

assume automatically in our society that that's bad and praise is good,

but that's not true.

Sometimes people put on facades of praise and have a smile and they're really

inside it's a fake smile. And so that's superficial and sometimes good old,

you know, critique like that is just people's advantage.

I remember one time I was watching a guy in a restaurant and I pulled him over

on the side and I said, just for whatever it's worth,

I just noticed the way you were handling that client, the client wasn't pleased.

Did you see that? And he go, yeah, I did. I said,

can you maybe consider trying this and see if that works different with him,

when you go back? And I gave him a response,

a critical response and gave him some feedback and they appreciated it.

I had a guy many years ago that came in to my office to try

to sell me yellow page ads.

Now they is back in the eighties so you can imagine there were yellow pages

then, telephone pages. And he came in and he did a presentation.

And I told him, I said, you got 10 minutes, start on it.

And he gave me this presentation.

It was the absolute ridiculous presentation on yellow page ads.

I was even considering maybe getting an ad until I heard him.

I stopped him cold and I said, stop right there. You know that, that is the,

I, that's not even a presentation on yellow pages.

That was the worst presentation I've ever seen. I said,

what do you really wanna do? This is not your heart. Your heart's not into this.

And he goes, that bad? And I said, that was that's ridiculous.

That was terrible presentation. I mean, I was turned off by as you spoke.

And he goes, wow. I said, what do you really wanna do?

This isn't what you want to do. Your heart's not here. Your soul's not here.

This is not what you really wanna say. What do you really wanna do? And he goes,

I wanna be in the restaurant business. I said, then get,

go right now and go find a restaurant. Get in the restaurant business,

quit playing this game and be, be inauthentic, go be yourself.

He said, yeah, you're right. This isn't working. I haven't sold anything.

I said, you're not gonna sell anything the way you are.

And I really critiqued him. And I said, go get in a restaurant business.

And so I gave him a good slamming on that. Not cruelly,

but just a good wake up call,

cause I can tell when people are not inspired by what they do and they deserve

to get feedback. Anyway, he left the office.

Eight years later, I happened to go out to lunch with my CPA,

my accountant and we just happened to go, we had a quick hour,

didn't have much time so we went to this little,

super salad place where you go in there and get in a line and pick up salad

goods and weigh it and then they'd pay by the weight, I mean,

it's just simple place. And as I walked in the place,

I was with a guy named Dan, my accountant. I said, Dan, get in line,

put a tray from me. I see somebody I must say hi to.

I saw the guy that came into my office and I walked

over to him and he was talking to a man and he didn't notice me at first.

And I was just standing there waiting for him to finish.

And all of a sudden he finishes with the man, the man starts to walk off,

he looks at me and he goes, oh my God. I said, I shook his hand.

He gave me a hug. And he said to me, he said, no,

first he said to the guy that was just walking off, he says, Joe, you know, hey,

come back here, this is the guy who I was telling you about.

And he introduced me to his friend who happened to be apparently some manager

in the restaurant. And he said to me then he said,

I have eight franchises, this is my franchise. I have eight of them.

I own eight restaurants. I got teary eyed.

I gave him a big hug right in his restaurant. I said, congratulations.

My criticism changed the course of his life.

My stepping up and giving him feedback was helpful.

Criticism doesn't have to be hurtful. It doesn't have to be painful.

It's if you understand what's going on,

you'll see that everything that's going on in your life is trying to help you

become authentic. And that's just one of many examples.

I've had people critique me sometimes in the way I'm presenting things and I

learn and I get new feedback. And then it helps me in my programs.

Criticism is not necessarily bad or good,

until you choose to it with a subjective bias. As Milton said,

you can make a heaven out of a hell or a hell out of a heaven,

you can sit there and be wounded by it. But the more addicted you are to praise,

the more you're vulnerable and dependent on the world around you and the more

criticism's gonna hurt.

As long as you end up giving a causal relationship to praise where you think,

well, that's somehow making you feel good,

then criticism's gonna make you feel bad.

Because you've set up in your mind a polarity,

instead of understanding the downsides of the praise and upsides of the

criticism.

I've seen that whole positive thinking movement try to go in there and try to

manage people with only positive statements. And then eventually,

you eventually repressed repressed, repressed, what you're also thinking,

and you're not giving them both sides of the feedback.

I had this lady that worked in my office,

she was a lovely woman and she was calling and talking to somebody on the phone

and afterwards I said, you know,

the way you spoke was amazingly articulate and just

magnificent presentation on how you communicated with them. But,

I will just have to say, we need to get it done in a little bit quicker time.

The timeframe in which you're doing is not cost effective.

So I gave her praise and reprimand, positive and negative,

and she appreciated both.

I'm a firm believer that both of 'em serve a purpose and they both keep you hone

you in on authenticity.

So don't sit there and get addicted to praise and fear criticism,

go and find out how it serves you and then look carefully,

every time you do a critical thing to somebody, your spouse usually, most,

by the way, you will never criticize anybody else more than you do yourself.

Every time you addict yourself to praise and puff yourself up,

you're going to end up beating yourself up too.

Because you're here to be authentic.

You wanna be loved and appreciated for who you are.

But if you're puffing yourself up, you're not being who you are.

How are you gonna be loved for it? If you're putting yourself down,

how you gonna be who you are? You're not gonna be loved for it.

And so your brain automatically has a feedback system, if you go up,

you automatically find, it's called the licensing effect.

If you do something you think is really good for your health,

you eventually eat chocolate,

overeat or drink some wine or do something else over here to counterbalance it.

You have a homeostat mechanism to get you authentic.

And if you go and exaggerate yourself, you'll beat yourself up,

because you know, you're not being authentic.

You have a desire to be loved for who you are and so do the people around you.

And so all of our feedback mechanisms,

the praise and reprimand are nothing more than trying to get us in equilibrium.

We lift people up that are down. We pull people down that are up.

And we try to get people in our hearts.

Where nobody's worth putting on pedestals or pits,

but everybody's worth putting in hearts.

And that's really what's going down is these,

these are mechanisms to get us authentic,

to help us communicate respectfully in a sustainable fair exchange way,

where we have the most sustainable relationships to give us an advantage.

So don't get addicted to one and subdicted from the other and thinking that

because the addiction to pride is gonna get you humbled

and trying to avoid reprimand is going to keep you from opportunity.

You need both. So honor both.

So write down the benefits of each time you've criticized and being criticized

and write down some of the drawbacks of when you've been praised and level the

playing field

so you're resilient and adaptable and appreciative of both sides that life has

to offer. You will never beat yourself up without building yourself up,

build yourself without beating yourself up.

I guarantee that elevated and low self-esteems that

self worth are just mechanisms to get you authentic. It's a homeostat.

It's just like if all of a sudden you get hot, you know, you sweat.

And if you get cold, you shiver.

Those are mechanisms to get you into the perfect temperature again,

they're feedback mechanisms to get you into the real you.

Everything is a homeostatic feedback system in our

even our sociology to help us become authentic,

cuz that's where we feel loved most. That's where we give most love.

And I really think that that needs to be heard because people sometimes get this

idea that, oh my, I mean,

I have people every weekend in the Breakthrough Experience

they say, well, my mom was critical. Okay.

What were you doing that was challenging your mom and what were you doing that

was arrogant and defiant? Oh yeah. I was, yeah.

I was with my friends and they had me puffed up and I was now challenging my mom

and she then criticized me in front of them.

And so I needed humbling in front of them to get me off the pedestal with them

and got me back into level playing field so there's now a relationship with my

mom. And they see it all of a sudden they go, oh, when I think about it, yeah.

And they don't want to admit their role.

They don't wanna see their own cause and effect,

but remember no therapy's ever complete until cause equals effect in space time.

It's not what happens out there.

It's your own perception and decisions and actions of what's out there.

And you're never just a victim of something going on out there,

you're simply an individual that's attracting these

you. If you see all of those events on the way and not in the way,

you're grateful for life.

If you see 'em in the way and not on the way now you're ungrateful for your

experience. So I just wanted to share a few moments with you on the idea of

criticism in life and how to be grateful for that.

Because I think that that's part of the essentialness of your life and it helps

you balance your emotions. And to help you further with this,

I have a free on demand masterclass called Balancing Your Emotions for Greater

Achievement. It will help you appreciate how to take whatever happens to you,

praise reprimand, and not get attached. As the Buddha says,

the desire for that which is unobtainable and the desire to avoid that which is

unavoidable is the source of human suffering,

don't be seeking one side and trying to avoid the other and be stuck in your

amygdala, like an animal and living in a survival mode, embrace

resiliently

and adaptably the two sides of life that are trying to keep you authentic and

honed in. So you can master the skill of communicating effectively,

what you love in terms of what other people love and be able to be yourself.

You wanna be loved for who you are. It's time to be who you are.

Praise and reprimand is respectfully helping you be who you are.

So please take advantage of this free masterclass that I just gave you,

and I look forward to seeing you next week. I hope this was stimulating to you,

make you think a bit and just know that next time somebody criticize you,

it could be an opportunity for you to do something even more profound and

magnificent with your life. May you be yourself,

the magnificence of who you are is far greater than any fantasies you'll put on