Being Open To Feedback

One of the most important things we can do for one another is offer feedback. We are all so stuck in our own limited awareness that we can’t see what appears to be so obvious to others. Much of our personal development and growth is a process of elevating our consciousness, becoming more aware of ourselves and how the world works around us, and we need others to point out our blind spots for us.

However, offering feedback can be really challenging. Sometimes you see something that someone else isn’t ready to see, and your mentioning it makes them feel insecure, get defensive, and create confrontation. We hesitate to say anything in the first place because we don’t want to make someone else upset. 

And it makes sense! In times when our understanding is put into question, or ego acts out in an act of self-preservation. Being able to receive feedback is a skill because it requires a lot of emotional control and humility to accept that you have flaws.

Receiving feedback was a big weakness of mine for a long time. If someone disagreed with me, didn’t like my idea, or didn’t understand my perspective - I’d get irritated. It would be difficult to get through to me because my ego held onto how things were so tightly. Fortunately, I now know that it was because of deep insecurities of not wanting to admit that maybe I’m not good enough, so I was unwilling to hear anything that suggested it.

It was an unconscious need that existed in complete contradiction to my conscious desire to grow and improve. And for too long I stopped getting feedback that would have genuinely helped me because I was so unpleasant about it, and it made people more reluctant to offer it knowing that it usually didn’t go well.

But here’s what shifted for me: I started observing my mood more and noting moments that set me off. And in that reflection I saw a consistent pattern that it was related to other people sharing their perspective and feedback with me. 

That practice primed my awareness and 1) Helped me regulate myself in moments where I was receiving feedback, and 2) Caused me to ask for feedback more knowing that I wasn’t getting it. What happened was I started noticing my life improving because of these suggestions, which caused my ego to slowly get quieter.

Of course I’m still very much in progress with this, but now I really value feedback, I welcome it, and I have the awareness to know that any irritation I feel when I start to receive it doesn’t serve me, and I have practices in place to be able to regulate it.

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