How should you rethink criticism?

Or: Do you have the courage to be disliked?

Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

“No experience is in itself a cause of our success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences — the so-called trauma — but instead we make out of them whatever suits our purposes. We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining.”
- The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga

I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of criticism in my creative practice this week. And I couldn’t possibly write about this topic without mentioning an obvious source: The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. I’m often sceptical of books people describe as ‘life-changing’, but I listened to this as an audiobook recently and found there was a lot of value to be gained here. The book is essentially a distillation of concepts based on Alfred Adler’s philosophical ideas. It got me thinking…