S3 E45: How to Reframe Criticism and Rejection With Self-Compassion
It can be devastating to experience failures, rejection, and criticism in your creative career, but they don’t have to haunt you forever. I share my favorite practices and journaling prompts to compassionately reframe these difficulties into learning and growth experiences, so you can confidently move forward with your big dreamy creative goals!
JOURNAL PROMPTS
1) What did you learn from that failure?
2) What happened afterwards, that might not have happened if your original plan had worked out?
3) How can you remind yourself that it's somewhat a numbers game, that trying more things means more failures, but also means more successes?
4) How can you interpret your feelings around this failure to glean more clues about what you really want from your life as an artist, and what you want from your life as a whole person?
MORE FROM REBECCA
Sign up for the free Feel Good Creativity Unchallenge (5 days of super easy creativity + wellness prompts)
Fuel Your Creative Work With Compassionate Productivity workbook
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Creative Wellness Letters (my every-other-week notes of encouragement for your creative life)
Self-compassion meditations from Dr. Kristin Neff
Insight Timer meditation app
TRANSCRIPT
Hello, everyone, welcome to Episode 45 of Being A Whole Person!
How's it going? It's kind of rough out there, isn't it? Before I get into anything that has to do with this episode, I just want to give you all a virtual hug. I know the summer hasn't turned out like I expected, and maybe not for you, either. We thought that the pandemic was ending and things were getting better and things were kind of hard to get. So if you're feeling like kind of a wrung out dish rag, really just drained, like I am, you're not alone. It's perfectly normal. We've lived through a lot in the last year and a half, and more.
I just want to let you know that however you're dealing with things right now, you're doing great. Even if you don't have the energy you wanted, or the amount of energy you feel you should have, if your capacity isn't matching what you desire to be doing. I see you. It's normal. It's frustrating. I'm feeling impatient, too, but trying my best to remind myself that whatever pace is happening is the right one.
I just thought that a message of compassion was the right way to start this episode, because it is all about self compassion in dealing with rejection and criticism. Last week, or last episode, I talked about the biggest failure of my music career and how I came out of that, how I dealt with that. Today is kind of the more tactical, suggestion-based episode companion to that one, with how you can deal with rejection and criticism when it comes up for you in your creative career.
Before I get into it, I have a few announcements. So Wednesday, August 25, is another free coworking session. That's going to be from 3:30 until 5pm Pacific. We'll get together, we'll state our goals to each other, we'll get our minds in the right place for creating by taking some breaths and having some mindset prompts at the beginning. Then we'll spend the time working, we'll take a break in the middle, and then at the end, we have a little mini-party with whatever beverage you have with you, because it's important to celebrate even the smallest of wins.
Everyone that's showed up to these free coworking sessions that I've been doing monthly since April has had a really productive time, and we've had a lot of fun with it. So if that sounds good to you. The sign up link is in the show notes. I hope you'll join us!
Speaking of coworking in mid September, I'm launching the compassionate creativity coworking club! We'll meet weekly for 90 minute coworking sessions, and there will still be a free one once per month in case you want to try it out before becoming a member. Along with that, I'm launching a way to support this podcast on Buy Me A Coffee, which is basically just like Patreon, but it also allows the option to buy me a coffee - buy me a tea, actually, because I don't drink coffee. If you don't feel comfortable, if it doesn't fit your budget to make a monthly contribution, you can just do a one-time thing, whatever works for you is totally cool. There'll be some fun rewards associated with that, and I'm really excited to share more in the coming episodes.
All right, so let's get into today's topic. We all know that rejection and criticism are not the most fun things to experience. Maybe that's a huge understatement. They can be very painful to experience, depending on how severe and how important those things were to you. I'm going to share with you some of my favorite practices for being self compassionate when these things happen to you.
The first thing, I think, is just to let yourself feel your feelings. They might be uncomfortable, you might want to push them away, that's completely normal. In order to really process those feelings, we have to let ourselves feel them, even if they kind of hurt, even if they feel tender. If you have resistance to it, that's totally okay.
It's okay to wallow in the disappointment that you feel. That's a completely normal human response. You don't need to do anything productive right away. I know a lot of us have this idea that getting stuck and wallowing are bad places to be. Maybe that's true, but it doesn't have to be that way. You're allowed to take some time to just feel bad about it. You're disappointed, that's totally fine.
As you're deep in these feelings, you can do your best to name them. Do you feel sad? Do you feel disappointed? Do you feel gutted? Put some words to your feelings to begin to understand exactly what they are. If you're having trouble putting words to what those feelings are, the Feelings Wheel is a really great resource. It's at feelingswheel.com, and that'll be in the show notes. It's just a wheel filled with groups of words, kind of grouped by mood to help you describe in words exactly what that emotion is.
Journaling might also be a helpful tool in processing. I'll have some prompts for you at the end of the episode that you can work through. Or just talking with a friend or family member, or a coach or mentor - somebody who gets what you're talking about, and who will be supportive and let you kind of talk through these things and process them verbally, if that's how you like to do it.
So yeah, you feel bad, because you wanted something, and it didn't work out, congratulations, you're a human. We've all gone through this too. You're not alone in it, even though it feels bad. So, when you're ready for it, you can focus on how human it is, and how you're part of a collective, how encountering rejection and criticism means that you're doing stuff. We're never met with 100% success. All of those successes come with a percentage of failures, too. It means you're doing the thing, which is awesome!
If your first reaction, when you experience failure or rejection or criticism, is to beat yourself up, I can relate to that, too. It's easy to want to reject yourself in that moment, to focus on all the things that went wrong, and all the things that you did wrong. That's all normal. But you also get to question that instinct. Our brains are built to keep us safe. They're going to naturally focus on what's wrong, not what's right. It's easier for our brains to protect us if they identify any possible threats, so that's where a lot of self criticism comes from. It's a natural response, but you don't have to subscribe to it and take it as gospel.
You can even start to counteract this by speaking directly to yourself. If you want to talk out loud, you totally can. If you just want to think these things internally, that's fine, too. Are there things that you can say that would be a positive response to that self criticism that comes up? If that doesn't come easily to you, that's okay. You can think about how you would talk to a friend going through the same thing, because I'm pretty sure that you are all wonderful people, wonderful, compassionate people, and you know exactly what you would say to someone you love. So that's a great starting point for turning that on yourself.
Just because you've done something wrong, or something has gone wrong, doesn't mean that you have to abandon yourself. You can even start to collect a set of responses or mantras for yourself that help kind of talk yourself down when you get into these beating yourself up moments or when you hear those critical voices in your head repeating the stuff that was painful. You can enlist friends and family, if necessary, to just give you a little reminder whenever you need it.
If you're not convinced right away by the positive messages, that's totally fine, too. I don't expect that saying a few positive things is going to completely turn around your mental state but it doesn't really matter actually, you're still planting the seeds of the feelings that you would rather have and those reminders are still good. Each time that you choose the more positive message for yourself, you're watering those seeds, and those are the ones that are going to grow. If you water the negative seeds, sometimes that might happen, too. But anytime you can make that choice, that's great.
Another tool I really like for when you hear critical voices ringing in your head, kind of like the professor that I heard in my head that I talked about in the last episode, is: write a letter that you won't send to that person. It could be a rebuttal of their criticism, it could just be an angry rant. Whatever helps you process it is awesome. You can tell that person what you need from them, even if they're not going to read it, because if this situation comes up again, this is good practice in naming your needs, and having an emotional conversation with an actual person who's in front of you at some point, if that happens.
Another thing that's really important when we're dealing with criticism or rejection is to separate the work from your intrinsic value as a person. You are not the work, you are separate from the work. I know this can be really hard to do for all of us creative people, all of us artists, because your work is so personal, your work is a reflection of who you are, and, you know, your creative work is a part of your identity, so I get that they are tightly wound around each other.
But don't forget that you are not the work. If you make some work that you think is bad, that does not translate into you being bad. You are the same excellent person, regardless of whether you like your work, and regardless of whether that person dishing out the criticism likes your work. This is a good opportunity to ask yourself, do you even agree with them?
Sometimes this stuff stings, at first, and we think about it for a little while. Then it's like, “Wait a second, I don't think that person is even right about what they're talking about. I am secure in what I think of myself and my work. Or, even if you don't feel completely secure in yourself and your work, you at least can say, “I am cultivating that feeling. I am working towards that feeling.”
Also ask yourself, how much does this criticism or rejection matter in the long run in the big scheme of things, maybe the thing you're pursuing was more of a “should” - something that came from external sources that thought you should want to do that. Maybe your soul didn’t actually resonate with it. If you come to that realization, that can really help take the sting out of that criticism.
Remind yourself of your many great qualities, of all the things that you're good at, because I know there are tons of them. Even though I don't know who is listening to this right now, I know that you have so many great qualities, and that you do so much great work.
When you're ready, you can begin to focus on resilience, and what you can learn from that experience. Maybe that criticism is correct. How can you use that constructively in your next project? How can you use that to change how you approach your work in the future? Ask yourself, why do you think this criticism or rejection happened? Kind of going to the root of that might dictate what you do in the future, too. If it was a job interview, maybe it's something about your preparation for that. If you're writing a grant, you'll get better at writing grants. Whatever you're applying for, there's probably something about the process that you could hone and improve for next time.
You can ask for feedback from the source of the criticism if it's appropriate, or if that's out of the question, just ask a trusted peer or a colleague what they think about your situation. They might have some good tips for you, and have that outside perspective to help you decide what you're going to do next time if you pursue the same thing again.
You get to decide to let go. You get to unhook the experience from your mind. When we're talking about fear, anxiety, that stuff's still gonna be in the car with you, but it doesn't get to drive the car. It's okay if it's hanging out in the backseat. You can tell it, hang on, you can't talk right now, I'm busy. You get to decide that it's not going to bother you anymore. Even if that's not an immediate process.
If it's difficult, it might be helpful to think about, how does letting go of this and moving toward a more peaceful attitude, how is that valuable to me? What does that do for you in a big picture sense? What will that open up for you in the future if you don't want this to hold you back?
There's a reason why I mentioned this at the end, because when it's still stinging and fresh, maybe you can't get there, but it's all a process, and you're allowed to go through it at whatever pace feels good for you.
Lastly, I'll share a few prompts that I shared in my newsletter last week, which, if you want to get every-other-week encouragement notes from me, my Creative Wellness Letters, there'll be a link to sign up for that in the show notes.They're very nurturing, and people find them really helpful.
But I’ll share these few prompts for times when you have experienced some kind of failure, and it's still haunting you. Number one, what did you learn from that failure? Number two, what happened afterwards, that might not have happened if your original plan had worked out? Because, there are lots of cool things that could happen, that you might not even predict, and that failure might actually be a blessing.
Number three, how can you remind yourself that it's somewhat a numbers game, that trying more things means more failures, but it also means more successes? And number four, how can you interpret your feelings around this failure to glean more clues about what you really want from your life as an artist, and what you want from your life as a whole person? So those will be in the show notes for you in case you're driving, and you can't write those down right now. I found those to be really helpful prompts in my own processing of failure.
I also want to mention one of my favorite resources, which is the self compassion meditations at self-compassion.org, which is Dr. Kristin Neff's website. She has lots of different meditations, and she just added a whole bunch. They range from five to, I think, 30-ish minutes, and they're for different topics related to self compassion. When I was unfamiliar with and even kind of suspicious of self compassion practices, her meditations really helped me. Just to have a really kind voice in my ear, that eventually becomes familiar enough that you start to think those things too. So if that's helpful for you, the link is in the show notes. I know her meditations are also in the Insight Timer app. And maybe some other apps too, that's the only meditation app that I use. But if you need a starting point for self compassion, that's a great place.
If you have a failure, or any mindset stuff that is just kind of hanging you up and leaving you stuck, and keeping you from pursuing the creative stuff that you really want to be doing, feel free to reach out and talk to me about it, too. I'd love to help you work through it. You can sign up for a free discovery call in the show notes. That's just a half hour free call where we talk through whatever is bothering you. No sleazy sales pitches, no pressure, just me helping you with the next step on your journey. You'll definitely leave with at least one tip or resource that is immediately actionable, because that's what we want, right? We need the easy wins first. Link is in the show notes for that.
I'm rooting for you. I'm rooting for you in your creative endeavors, and I'm rooting for you and taking the rest that you need to - if you're having a hard time right now, or if you're not - either way we all need to rest. That's what enables us to replenish our energy for the important stuff that makes life meaningful, and it's what we want to be doing. So with that, I will leave you until next time, and I'm wishing you well.
Pianist and composer