If you are a person who only loves to hear praises and good comments, make up your mind and get real. There's no one who can be totally perfect from every angle. Every normal human being will at least do something wrong in his whole life, and I firmly believe in that. And the sequence of the mistake done is CRITICISM which most of the time hurts especially for those who is vulnerable to criticism. Thus, learning on how to take the criticism in a healthy way shall help us from feeling down.
1. Listen to what a critic is saying. Really listen, try to understand that point of view, don’t just nod while you formulate your retorts.
2. Don’t be defensive. This is the toughest step. You may have your own point, but try to remind your self , “I welcome criticism. This person is helping me. I’m eager to hear how to improve myself/life.”
3. Don’t fire back by criticizing your critic. Your comments will just sound defensive, and you’ll escalate the exchange. This urge is very difficult to resist, because the impulse to justify and attack is strong when you feel criticized, but it just isn’t helpful, and it certainly isn’t effective.
4. Delay your reaction. Count to ten, take a deep breath, sleep on it, wait until the next day to react to the critic…any kind of delay is good. For example, when you’re upset about something that happened to you, don't let yourself do anything about it for few moment – and sometimes no action is better than action.
5. Explain honestly the reason for your actions. Sometimes it’s tempting to re-characterize your actual feelings and motives. Usually, though, that just complicates things more. It becomes impossible to have an honest exchange.
6. Admit your mistakes. This is extremely effective and disarming. When I got my first job, my father told me, “If you take the blame, you’ll get the responsibility.” I’ve found that to be very true. Difficult, but true. Admitting mistakes is the first step, then…
7. Explain what you’ve learned. If you can show a critic that you’ve learned something, you prove that you’ve understood the criticism and tried to act on it. That, itself, usually mollifies critics.
8. Enjoy the fun of failure. Re-frame the issue entirely to embrace criticism. Fact is, trying new things and aiming high opens you to criticism. Tell yourself to enjoy the fun of failure to try to re-frame failure and criticism as part of the fun. Otherwise, your dread of criticism can paralyze you.
-a part of this article quoted from an article written by Gretchen Rubin.
