In college I had the pleasure of having a genius for a roommate. He came from a family of geniuses. In fact, his father was a world-renowned psychologist who was in every psychology textbook in the world. And his mother was a genius; his brother was a genius; the whole family were geniuses! His IQ was well over 140. And that paid off in many instances. Any time I couldn't understand anything about anything , he could explain it. The only problem was getting him to explain it in terms I could understand. Now he was also a mechanical genius. He could rebuild a car from the ground up. Engines, transmissions, carburetors, everything. And yet he had never studied mechanics, but he had this natural genius.
Well, that was the good news. The bad news was that any time he wanted to play a practical joke on me, it was a pretty ingenious joke or prank. He stayed true to form the night I got married. And because I got married my junior year in college, we didn't have much money for a fancy wedding. We didn't have money for a limousine, and we drove away from the church in our own car. As I began to drive away, I came to a stop light, and as I began to slow down for that stoplight, my horn started blaring as loud as it could, and I had no idea why. And I thought: What is wrong with this car? The horn's doing something crazy! But then the light turned green and the horn went off, and I thought, Okay, that was just a fluke.
Well, I drove a few miles and the car in front of me started to slow down. And again, as I began to slow down, I noticed the horn went blaring again. In fact, the car in front of me got quite upset that I was honking my horn at him and I had to raise my hands off the wheel so he could see I wasn't doing it on purpose, and I couldn't figure out what is going on.
And then we came to a stoplight, and there were about four cars around me and in front of me. As we came to that stop light and I started to put the brakes on, once again, the horn started blaring. And now everybody was getting angry at me. And every single stoplight, every time I'd slow down because the traffic in front of me would slow down, my horn would honk at everybody around me and in front of me. And people were really getting irritated. And it was driving me nuts.
And then I realized, the horn had been attached to the brake. And every time my brake lights went on, the horn went on. And so I pulled over, and this is after going through about 10 minutes of this nonsense. Rick, the genius, gets out of his car—because he had been following us watching all this—and he's laughing. I said, "What did you do?" And he said, "Well, I attached it to the brake lights." And I said, "Well, I know that, but how?" And he said, "Well, I won't tell you now ." And he said, "I even painted the wire black so you couldn't find it." Like I could really find it if it was a red wire, because I knew nothing about cars. But the fact is it drove me crazy.
Well, all he had to do is disattach the wire and now the horn could have its normal use. Well, it was very late at night, and we had to drive about 150 miles to where we were going to have our honeymoon, and as we were driving down the highway, all of a sudden, off a side road, a car started to come out onto the highway in front of us. And I hit that horn as loud as I could because I would have hit that car if it had proceeded onto the highway; I would have hit it going about 70 miles an hour. I had a big car—it was a 1969 Chevrolet Impala—and it would have totaled that car. It probably would have killed me and my new wife, and the person that we hit would have been dead. But I hit that horn as hard as I could. The person instantly slammed on the brakes, and I swung the car around, and we made it. We didn't kill that person or ourselves.
Well, what had happened? What had been a really bad irritation just an hour before—something that was driving me crazy, something that irritated me and my new wife, made the drive absolutely miserable—all of a sudden had saved my life. Same horn. No difference in the horn. But all of a sudden it had been turned from an enemy into an ally.
And that's what I'd like to demonstrate to you here. You can take one of your worst enemies in life and turn it into one of your best friends, one of your best teachers, one of your best mentors. You can take all the pain and irritation away from this enemy, just completely disarm it and end up making it a welcome friend. Something that can really help you out in a time of need. Sounds impossible, but it's true.
What I'm talking about here is criticism. And criticism, like that horn, can be irritating; it can be a thorn in your side. In fact, it can do a lot more. It can actually hurt your feelings, and it can inflict so much hurt that from that point on you begin to avoid criticism no matter what the cost.
And we do whatever we have to do oftentimes to avoid criticism, even going so far as ending relationships. We end relationships with our loved ones, our family. We can end relationships in a marriage, with our children, with our parents, because criticism can be so painful. In fact, I recently asked an audience of about 3,500 people, "How many of you appreciate and enjoy criticism?" Not one hand went up. I asked, "How many of you hate being criticized? Especially severely by someone you care about? Can I see your hands?" Every single hand went up.
So, our focus here isn't to fight criticism; it's not to end criticism, because it'll never happen. We will face criticism the rest of our life. But we can turn it from being our enemy into our friend.
Here's a statement from one of my favorite people in history, Sir Winston Churchill. He wrote, "Criticism is often useful, and praise is often deceitful." He was literally saying I would rather be criticized than praised. Why? Praise doesn't make you do anything. It just makes you sit back and smile. Criticism makes you refocus and rethink something—if you don't run away from it.
Lillian Gish was one of the top silent-screen stars of her day. And her movies were just automatic box-office hits. She was that big a draw to the box office. She wrote, "I like people to come back and tell me what I did wrong. That's the kindest thing they can do." There was a woman who realized that criticism could be her friend instead of her enemy.
But you say, "Wow, that's nice for them, but I still don't like being criticized by my wife or my husband or my friends or my teachers or my bosses or my partners or whatever. I hate it!" Well, you're like everybody else in the world. So what do we do? What's the magic? What had Churchill found that was so effective in his life? All it takes is a specific technique that magically turns it from an irritating and destructive force into a powerful ally and positive force in our life.
There are three steps that will turn any criticism from being our worst enemy into becoming one of our best friends and most important teachers. First step, you consider the source. In considering the source, you determine how qualified they are to give such a criticism. Are they very qualified? Somewhat qualified? Or not qualified at all?
For example, a friend of mine was going through a custody situation with her ex-husband, and her mother started giving advice. Her mother said, "You ought to demand that the custody change from one state to the other." Now that doesn't sound like a criticism; that sounds like a suggestion. But the way it was offered was in the form of a criticism. I mean, the tone of voice, everything.
Well, you have to consider the source. In this case, this person's mother had no legal experience, wasn't familiar with custody laws of the state of California or the state of Utah, and, therefore, the mother was totally unqualified to make that kind of criticism. She wasn't very qualified; she wasn't somewhat qualified; she wasn't qualified at all.
Going back to when I got started, one of my first bosses said, "You are the single greatest disappointment in my entire career. You will never succeed in marketing. You have 20 minutes to clean out your desk." How qualified was he to give the two criticisms that were in those three statements? Well, he was very qualified to give the first. He said, "You're the single greatest disappointment in my entire career." He knew his career. He knew how many disappointments he had had. So he was qualified to do that.
Then he made a second criticism: "You will never succeed in marketing." Now how qualified was he to make that prediction? Well, not qualified at all. Why? He wasn't a prophet; he couldn't predict the future. And as it turned out, he was totally wrong! My whole career has been built on my marketing skills, and I have been very successful and so happy to be sharing these steps with you now. So he wasn't qualified, and I am grateful for that.
So the first step is we consider the source: How qualified are they? Now there are a couple more parts to this first step. Next we look at: What is the basis of their criticism? Is it emotionally based? Is it based on your or their past experience or experiences? Their past failures or your past failures? Was it based on their lack of understanding or fully comprehending your goal, intention, or vision? Oftentimes people criticize us because they simply don't understand what we're saying or what our vision is or what our intention or goal is. Or is it based on their conventional thinking rather than creative thinking? I took a suggestion to this particular boss that was really creative. But he wasn't a creative person. The creative people were in the ad agency. This guy was MBA-type mentality. I mean, he managed everything, but he wasn't real creative. And what I was saying wasn't conventional on one particular idea I presented that he completely cut down. Well, that idea ended up making his company millions of dollars later on, made me over a million dollars later on, but because he was a conventional thinker and I was thinking outside of his box, he criticized it.
Now, still considering the source, is their criticism based on logic? Or is it based upon the realities of the situation? That's the most effective criticism. That's the criticism we really want, when the source of the criticism is basing it on reality because it helps us focus on reality.
It helps us see reality even when we aren't capable of seeing it. It cuts through the fog in a situation and it gives us clearly defined instruments that we can look at, and then we can correct our position so we don't crash and burn.
Next in considering the source: What is their motive? Now this doesn't necessarily make their criticism valid, but it makes it a lot more tolerable. Is the motive of the critic love or concern for you or the project or concern for others? Or is it selfishness, jealousy, fear, animosity, hurt, anger, immaturity? You have to look at their motive.
Step two is to consider the accuracy of the criticism. Now, when my boss said, "You are the single greatest disappointment in my entire career," I had to look at the accuracy of that. I had to look at this guy and say, Okay, he's had a very distinguished career. He was at another Fortune 500 company before he came to the company that I worked for. So, I'm sure he had a distinguished career. He was a brilliant person. And I was only an assistant manager. So how could I have possibly given him the greatest disappointment of his career?
When I realized that, when I considered the accuracy of his criticism, all of a sudden I realized he was just exaggerating. There's no way that a $12,000-a-year employee, assistant manager, could be the greatest disappointment in this senior vice president of marketing's career. He was just exaggerating. That really helped me. That took a lot of the sting out of the criticism.
And step three—and this is the single most important step in turning your criticisms from enemy to ally— take responsibility for your response. Zig Ziglar talks about reacting versus responding. This is a situation in which 99 out of 100 times our inclination is to react. Somebody criticizes us, and we want to defend our action. We want to attack them back. We want to belittle their criticism. We want them to tell they're all wet; they don't know what they're talking about. We want to do anything. We want to bad-mouth them to somebody else. We want to gossip about them. We want to discredit them and hurt them back. We want to criticize them. Those are all natural reactions. But reactions aren't going to advance you to your dream. They're going to keep you from achieving your dream. So this is a time when you have a choice. You can react or you can respond.
You may blow it and react initially. But blowing it in the initial reaction doesn't keep you from going back and dusting yourself off and then responding to it. It's critical that you take responsibility for your response to criticism.
Realize that almost every criticism has at least a little flake of gold in it. Sometimes you have to dig for it; sometimes it will be right in front of you. And when you approach it that way, instead of fearing criticism, you become like Sir Winston Churchill, Lillian Gish, Steve Scott, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and the list could go on and on.
So, go back to your criticisms, and start mining them for gold. As you do this, fear of criticism will leave. You will no longer guide your behavior based on your fear of criticism. You'll go ahead and take the risks and run after the opportunities and dreams you should be chasing because you won't worry about what people think or say about it, and life in general will take on a whole new meaning.
Also, when you lose that fear, your relationships will grow. And you'll be able to respond more effectively. Instead of making people afraid of criticizing you, you'll receive positive criticism and you'll be able to mine it, and it will push you forward. You'll feel more peace and confidence in your decision making. You will be amazed at the difference this will make in the pursuit of both your personal and professional dreams.
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