Today I want to draw attention to the very normal, and yet very unhelpful, habit virtually all of us have of giving far more weight to criticisms or our faults, rather than acknowledgements or what’s gone well.
My kids got their reports this week which on the whole were about 9/10 for each of them and yet each child gave far more weight to the aspects mentioning what they needed to work on. Some were just pointing to future targets that they were not even supposed to be achieving yet! Hence the kids were not exactly whooping for joy despite the reports basically being great. I had to sit down with each of them individually and read through each part to help them to acknowledge and receive the compliments that were written all of the way through.
Then last night, as I was putting my son to bed, we were talking about what’s been great about his school, as we are about to move away. He came up with a couple of things and then went straight to the few times he got in trouble and he felt that the Head will be glad to see him go. Now it’s fair to say she might be quite glad to see the back of me with my insistence on doing term-time holidays every year & refusal to put the kids in navy blue identical coats – LOL – but actually my son is a good kid whom teachers like.
And we all do this. I believe it’s because our brain is programmed to be on the alert for threats in the environment incase a lion is about to eat us. But it’s actually not that helpful in the modern World. And certainly not great when we look at our relationships or our own self-esteem.
This is why a rule of thumb is to give 5 acknowledgements or praise for every criticism because basically it needs 5 big ones to make up for the hurt caused by the negative. Otherwise your relationships (romantic, kids, extended families, work colleagues etc) will suffer and lose connection. 5 to 1. That’s a lot of work for each criticism. I don’t know about you but I reckon it would be easier just to hold back on the ‘constructive feedback’ or ‘in your best interests helpful comments’ as much as possible or you are going to have to get your spade out and do a lot of digging, and we are definitely not talking about sandcastles.
And also notice how we can do it to ourselves. We need to consciously always remind ourselves of what we’ve done well, what’s gone well, where we can be proud of who we are … otherwise our old-school brain will take over and self-criticise. In the Happiness course I ran recently every week started with writing down 3 good things to help to get that habit going. It really can make a huge difference to your self-confidence and mood.
My challenge, should you choose to accept, is to be kind in your words and thoughts – firstly to yourself and then to those around you. Please like / share and spread some kindness, Sue X