Reclaim Your Personal Power from Critics

I’ve learned in recent years, that I am too often a victim of my internal responses to someone else’s words or actions. One person can criticize a talk I give and it wipes away the joy I felt over 200 other people praising my talk. Why? Because, as a child, I was programmed to feel bad about myself.

My negative internal response, usually shame and embarrassment, in the present moment to a negative person isn’t about that person, what they have to say or the present moment at all. My negative internal response is foremost about the past.

All of the old repressed feelings from childhood to adulthood come rushing over me like hot, burning lava from a valcano that has just erupted inside of me— a valcano of old, hurting feelings that my wounded inner-child is still painfully bearing.

I believe it’s important to realize this. It has never made sense to me that over the course of my entire life, one critical person’s response can destroy my joy; even when he/she is in the vast minority with their criticism.

It’s important to realize this because 1) I’ve learned to realize that their criticism is really about them and their own arrogance, not about me; and 2) because it helps me to realize just how wounded my inner-child still is, and gives me the ability to nourish the wounds I still have inside of me.

And I am able to nourish those wounds by working my Recovery program, trusting in my Higher Power and myself, and choosing to believe that the 200 people who loved my work were right and the one critic was wrong.