If you have ever put yourself out there, you will generate criticism.

Putting yourself out there can be voluntary or involuntary.

If you work in tech, your living depends on it, you have to do it involuntarily. If you are looking to improve your writing, you have to voluntarily publish blogs and take feedback from people, that may not be positive all the time.

I will only be talking about criticism that you receive in response to an action, it can be constructive guiding on improvements or destructive poking holes without any guidance.

Listen and Evaluate

We can get really defensive when we receive criticism on something that we have spent time and energy on.

When you are given any critique, listen and evaluate it on its merits and try to be as objective as possible.

Take what you think is valid feedback and disregard the rest.

What is valid feedback?

Something that tells you what you might have done wrong and how you can improve.

There is a difference between when someone is criticizing your work, your art, or your ideas just to bring you down OR when they genuinely care about helping you out.

You need to focus on the former and disregard the latter.

You are not your work

I learned a long time ago that we need to detach our feelings from the work we have done to be able to learn and grow. That's the only way you can take criticism fairly.

When somebody criticizes you for your work, there is a chance you can improve it. The other person has just opened a dialogue for you to ask questions, reiterate your work, and improve upon it.

Keep Growing

As I said before, to grow you need to put yourself out there and get feedback from people.

You will generate a lot of criticism of your work in the process, but that's okay. That's the part where you improve and grow.