Mom, They Yelled At Me! (Come on, Man!)

Mom, They Yelled At Me! (Come on, Man!)

Thank you for asking, I’ll tell you what’s pathetic: There are people on Facebook who have received unkind feedback from a single person and now want swarms of people to reassure them. If one-off feedback throws you into a conniption that requires community solace, you have a huge emotional problem.

If you receive a pattern of negative feedback from a variety of people, you ought to consider it and seek improvement. But one-off feedback is for the sender, not the recipient. They’re usually playing “gotcha.” You can safely ignore it.

If your ego is so fragile that someone randomly saying, “I thought the ending of your speech was weak,” or “Your shoes weren’t shined well,” or “Your voice is too squeaky,” causes you trauma, well, you have “issues.” Someone told me once that Million Dollar Consulting (on the shelves for 30 years through six editions) is “verbose.” I told him that the real issue was that he had the attention span of a gnat.

If you have to go crying on social media because you can’t put feedback into perspective, I suggest you never enter a buyer’s office with the idea of converting that person to a client. And never walk on a stage unless the audience is your family. Well, maybe not even then….