People are wired to judge the world around them.
In many ways it’s useful. We see a situation and make a judgement using our history of lessons learned. Most of the time we’re probably right or we aren’t wrong enough for it to make a difference.
But if you run into people that judge aspects of your life chances are they don’t even know the half of it. Both the bad and the good.
For example, someone notices that you lost a sale. They point out the reason they feel that you lost out on the sale. It’s probably true. It can make you irritated or even angry and resentful at the person. But if you step back and think about it you’ll realize that they don’t even know the half of it.
There were probably multiple things that went wrong with that deal. Mistakes that you made that they didn’t even realize. So in a way they’re missing out on criticizing you even more.
The same is true with praise. Say that you make a big sale. To someone on the outside they may identify one or two things they think made the sale happen. They praise you for it. They’re right in their praise. It feels good. But you probably know that a lot more went into the closing of the deal. More work. Lots of little things that the person really didn’t identify. Maybe you feel they should be praising you even more.
Now, we don’t always think that way. The takeaway for this point is to realize that only you know what your intentions are. You only know what your goals are and the work that you’re putting in. It’s not fun when someone is pointing out the things wrong with you. But the truth is they could be pointing out even more. And the same is true with praise. It feels good. But really people don’t know the half of it.
So try to pay attention to yourself the most. You know what you’re trying to do. You know the game you’re playing. Nobody else knows the half of it. This involves some pain. It involves frustration. But the more you let others affect you the more likely you are to avoid doing the things you want to do in life.