The Practice of Receiving Feedback

Over the years, based on practices of wise speech and deep listening, I’ve developed some guidelines for asking for and being open to feedback, especially as we navigate this technological era. If the ideas below are at all useful to you in working with the winds of praise and blame, please make use of them.

Receiving feedback is always uncomfortable. Much of the discomfort originates in that neutral space in between positive and negative feedback, where we don’t know what someone thinks of us. Even if you get feedback from someone who has nothing but great things to say about your qualities or your work, a person whose opinion you trust completely, you are still being beheld. The irony of feedback is that while we long to be known by others, it’s also fundamentally uncomfortable to be seen. There’s something inherently naked and tender about being assessed, even if you feel vulnerable for only a moment. Being witnessed by another person is just … awkward. Such is the nature of human connection and the nature of colliding subjectivities. The feeling of putting yourself—and your reputation—out into the world is always uneasy, even if you grow accustomed to receiving feedback. 

“Preparing for the ouch” does not mean bracing unnecessarily or spinning out into cycles of rumination about how you might be perceived. It means that whenever you put yourself “out there” in some way, you prepare yourself by contemplating the basic view that when responses come back, they’re probably going to make you feel something that’s not entirely comfortable to feel. Praise generally feels good, but it can be overwhelming, just like pleasure. Criticism generally hurts, just like pain. Not knowing what others think can feel anchorless and uncomfortable. These facts of life aren’t going to change, even if you become an awakened Buddha. Knowing that a feeling is coming, we can remind ourselves of the power of owning our humanity instead of trying to escape it.

It’s amazing what happens when you receive feedback that contains even a molecule of criticism. I’ve watched my mind while receiving feedback about a course I’m teaching or a piece of writing. I might receive an email that raises ten different points about the work, and nine of them might be praise and validation. But my eyes and ears will comb and scour, usually before I’m even aware it’s happening, for the one piece that’s negative. Like an archer focusing on a target, the mind goes straight to the critical piece before absorbing any of the validating information. It’s humbling to watch the erasure of all praise, witnessing the mind sink its jagged teeth into the one piece of feedback that suggests we’re not quite there yet.

Most of this internal one-sidedness is due to the negativity bias, the way our nervous systems have evolved to highlight potential threats and filter out other information. When receiving feedback, I try to remember that part of my mind always fears for my reputational survival, even if it’s the most benign moment imaginable. Maybe I’m only asking my friend if they liked the salmon I just cooked. Therefore, whenever you can, remember to pause and breathe after the receipt of feedback. If you use practices like loving-kindness or self-compassion, take a few moments to do those practices. Try not to respond immediately. Remembering that vulnerability is part of being human helps us to stay balanced and receptive when we’re in the tender moment of being assessed. The reason feedback is so important to us is that it relates to our position in our group. When we pause, we’re better able to absorb constructive aspects of the feedback rather than defending or deflecting.

The negativity bias causes another distortion in our relationship to praise and criticism: It causes us to overpersonalize everything. Even if you receive criticism about a behavior or piece of work that speaks clearly and effectively to the issue at hand without vilifying you as a human, the negativity bias can make you feel like you’re being called a “bad self,” who is under attack. Since self is a fluid process, not a solid entity, looking for the “bad me” at the center of critical feedback is always going to be a fool’s errand. In the pause, we allow ourselves to take a little longer and see how we’re defending against a threat to our well-being that’s most likely nonexistent.

My friend Susan Piver—author, Buddhist teacher, and entrepreneur—once shared wonderful advice on how to seek feedback from others. She often works on long-term creative projects. She had one friend she would ask for feedback when she was at work on a project, but he would focus almost entirely on pointing out potential obstacles in the project, rather than seeing the imaginative opportunities of her work. She realized that this wasn’t a helpful person to ask for feedback early on in her process. At that point, to feed her creativity and get the work rolling, she needed a “hype man,” to put it in the eternal terms of hip-hop, not a grad school thesis advisor. If Susan focused only on obstacles before she got the work rolling, her inspiration would be hampered and the momentum of the project would be stalled. 

We need people in our corner showing us what the humanist psychologist Carl Rogers called “unconditional positive regard”—people who reflect back to us our inherent worthiness when we get stuck and just don’t want to show up.

When you’re requesting feedback, it’s nice to have multiple voices who can serve different roles in the way they assess you. First, make sure you have at least one or two “hype people” in your corner who raise you up no matter what, and who only care that you’re trying. If hip-hop stars, who often seem like the most confident humans of all time, need hype men, then we all do. If we are each going to hold our seat through all the criticism we receive for engaging wholeheartedly in the world, we need people in our corner showing us what the humanist psychologist Carl Rogers called “unconditional positive regard”—people who reflect back to us our inherent worthiness when we get stuck and just don’t want to show up.

But if all you have is hype people, you’re in trouble. If no one ever gives you difficult feedback, your being grows increasingly fragile, and you get addicted to the need for constant validation. To balance out the hype people, I try to get feedback from multiple people who don’t have the same vantage point on life—or on me. And I try to remember that asking for feedback puts the other person under no obligation to give it or to teach me anything. And, most importantly, don’t ask somebody what they think unless you really want them to tell you.

There’s a great slogan from classic Tibetan Buddhism on the bodhisattva path, the path of working with relationships in a compassionate way. It translates (slightly mysteriously) as “Of the two witnesses, observe the principal one.” The two witnesses are yourself and others, and you are always the principal witness of your own actions and behaviors. The slogan means that we always have access to other people’s opinions, and then we have our own insight and intuition into how we’re doing and what path we need to pursue. This is true of any situation where we are trying to make something happen, whether it’s starting a new organization, being in a romantic relationship, or pursuing spiritual awakening.

If we’re wise, we seek the counsel of others, especially wise friends and elders. But we’re also going to get feedback from those whose opinions we never asked. Often, unsolicited feedback comes from those who are uninvested in the work you’re doing or have motives other than a genuine care for your progress as a human. People frequently give unsolicited feedback in their most reactive moments.

Our technology not only allows this reactive feedback but also tends to encourage it. We each receive feedback that is wildly projective and just plain off. Just as technology has fundamentally altered our relationship to pleasure and pain, it has also taken the task of working with praise and criticism into a tornado zone of misinformation, zingers, dunks, and bad takes. We’re all struggling with how to become more mature in listening and expressing. This struggle would still be happening if all we had were our face-to-face exchanges with the people in our immediate social circles. Giving and receiving feedback is hard enough between people who know and trust one another. 

The usefulness of technology to help us hear and see more perspectives directly mirrors its potential to undercut our confidence. Like many people, I’ve spent time licking my wounds because somebody sent me a harsh email about my work or a mean comment on a social media post. When that happens, I try to practice compassion for myself and for that person. I try to remember that I’m still learning how to express myself effectively, and that all us humans are just learning how to talk to each other.

Not all unsolicited feedback is trolling, and some of it can be useful. I’ve gotten some great feedback from people I never asked and didn’t know. My guideline for incorporating unsolicited feedback is to always do my best to listen and see if the person is coming from positive intentions. I’ve learned so much from opening my eyes and ears to the things people are saying. The multiplicity of perspectives is the saving grace of our online spaces. If a person says something that doesn’t resonate with my inner compass (the principal witness), I thank them and move on. But if I start to hear the same thing from multiple sources, and it resonates (partially or fully) with me, I do my best to contemplate and integrate what they’re saying into my behavior over time.

What about getting praise? Praise is not only validating, it’s essential for accessing your confidence. Praise reminds you that effort pays off and reinforces a sense of worthiness. We each need other people to tell us we’re basically good, that we matter, that we’re amazing in our own way, and most importantly, that we’re headed in the right direction for growth to occur. We all need people who appreciate us and remind us that all the hard work of taking our seat is worthwhile. Praise also reminds you of all the things you don’t need to work on. Much of the time, our desire not to mess up will lead us to focus on the things we already do well, when we really need to lean into the places where we feel less secure. If we lean too hard on our strengths, we end up lopsided.

Sure, some of us have an addictive relationship to praise that mirrors an addictive relationship to pleasure. But most people I know grow visibly uncomfortable when they come face-to-face with genuine praise. If you want to see a person squirm, find somebody you care about right now and give them a compliment for no reason. Watch that person try to change the subject or look at you like you’re high. As much as the winds of criticism can hurt, the receipt of appreciation makes us feel equally naked and vulnerable. In the same way that it’s hard to be fully and completely present with a moment of pleasure, it’s difficult to hold your seat through a moment of praise. Still, just as we have to learn to feel the ouch of criticism more fully, we also have to learn to feel the gooey, chocolate-all-over-your-face warmth of praise as well. We have to practice holding our seats with both of these winds. So the next time someone compliments you, see if you can pause for a moment. Notice any tendency to ignore, deflect, or explain away the praise. Stay with your body instead. And simply practice saying these two words: “Thank you.” 

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This piece was excerpted and adapted from Confidence: Holding Your Seat Through Life’s Eight Worldly Winds, by Ethan Nichtern, New World Library, June 2024.