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There are fine lines between encouragement, challenging someone to improve and criticizing them. Aside from when you are raising children (I think there is a different dynamic) most adults seem to err on the side of caution.

People tend not criticise. They avoid confrontation. Encouragement is always ‘positive’, and critcism is required to be ‘constructive’ – whatever that means.

If you are serious about personal development, growth and your own success, I have the following advice for you:

Embrace criticism, disagreements and confrontation. More than that, actively seek it out.

Deal with it by recognising that the ‘criticism’ is about the process and not about the person. Even when someone criticises you for being arrogant (for example) – it may seem at first glance that they are being critical of the person, but they really are simply articulating how they perceive your impact on themselves or possibly other people.

It isn’t a criticism of who you are. Even when it sounds like it or feels like it (at first cut) – take a pause to consider. The person doing the criticizing may just not have the skill to de-personalise the observation – and you need to simply re-frame that observation in your own terms. Then consider it objectively (unemotionally) and decide what to do about it.

You cannot live you life by avoiding criticism or moderating your actions by the light of every disagreement. You need to be stronger than that. Your self-identity should be strong enough to consider every criticism, evaluate what it means in the context of your own goals and objectives, and formulating an appropriate response.

And often the response is – or should be: ‘mmmmh, interesting – I understand where they are coming from, but I am going to continue down this path.’

If the observation clarifies why you may be experienceing certain obstacles, then you may moderate your behaviour to facilitate achievement of your own goals.

Criticism is not like a rock in the river that you should ‘flow around’. A better analogy would be that criticism is like a chisel that can shape your behaviour. And sometimes it is or should be too blunt to make a difference.

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My son (Matthew) is a sporty kid. Being summer and being Australia, the sporting field must be cricket.  The summer of 09 hasn’t been too kind when it comes to the big scores, and recently it was just a classic opportunity to impart a life lesson.

Eleven (11) may be considered young – but I thought he was old enough to understand. On this particular day it was a battle for survival. The previous week (day 1 of the match against this team) his side was short a few players (including Matt who was at the Athletics carnival.) They got rolled, and the opposition quickly put on a lead and declared, going for an outright win.

If you don’t follow cricket, all you need to know is this:
On this Saturday the team had try and bat the whole day. Firstly to make up the deficit, and then to build a score that could be defended. We lost a wicket early and then Matt went in. He was asked, told and KNEW that they had to bat for a long time. I know it sounds silly if you are not familiar with cricket, but the objective was to ‘no lose’ – the score was irrelevant.

He just got a start and then started ‘slogging’ – and before long was caught out by a fine catch. (Normally at this age those catches don’t stick, so he was probably unlucky.)

Out for single figures. Failure.

Anyway, to make a long story short – the team went on to post a reasonable score and had to defend only for about 90 minutes. The match had to finish at noon – and the opposition scored the winning run with a minute to spare.
If one batsman had stayed in for 2 more minutes – if only…

And this was the lesson that I tried to impart.

Success in life – as it is in a junior cricket match – requires these 3 steps to be followed.
Pick: Figure out what needs to be done. Figure out what you want to do. Decide in the one thing…

Learn: Learn how to do it. If you know a little, learn more, if you know a lot, learn more. Learn how – that is the engine.

Do: Then do it. Execute what you want do and execute in the right way – the way that you learned.

Simple: Pick – Learn-Do. PLD.

A few iterations and a few examples and he got it – I am glad to say. He learned – but time will tell whether he will do the ‘doing’ bit.

When I was still living in South Africa, I played more golf than I do now. As was the custom, every golfer would have a caddie. Caddies were typically under-employed and uneducated; trying to eke out a living on fairly meagre payments as caddies on the all-white golf course of the time. (I am not proud of it, but that is what it was like back then.) I learnt one of the most important lessons of my life on such a golf course, from a gap-toothed, semi-literate character who was my caddie on that particular day. (I wish I remembered his name or could find him again because I would like show my gratitude.) He watched (obviously in agony) for awhile as I was leaving quite a few puts short on this particular day. One after the other my puts would stop short of the hole. Eventually he could not contain himself anymore and he blurted out: “Give the ball a chance, master – give the ball a chance.” For a moment I was on the verge of being upset about his unsolicited advice. (Remember, unlike pro caddies, none of them could actually PLAY golf and they really just carried the bags.) But then I realised the wisdom of those words, and I couldn’t help but smile. (The rest of my four-ball burst out laughing of course.) If you don’t hit the ball hard enough it will not go in the hole. That is the difference between success and failure: how hard you hit the ball. Hitting it hard is not a guarantee that it will go in, but hitting it too softly, is a guarantee that it WON’T go in. (Was it Wayne Gretzky who said: ‘I miss 100% of the shots that I don’t take’?) This poor soul living on the edges of civilisation had given me a life-lesson that I have remembered ever since. And I thought of it again today when I made this discovery I want share with you. Once again I had to think about whether I wanted to do something or … let it slide past. I remembered my caddie and his echo reminded me to give the ball a chance.