Give Your Brain Time to Catch Up: The Truth About Receiving Feedback

We've talked a lot about giving feedback, but feedback is a gift. No, I, I hear so often from people that they feel this pressure or this expectation to hear it, process it, accept it, have a pithy response about what they're gonna do with it, and then take action right away. And the reality is our brains just don't work that way. You know, especially if it is something that is surprising or makes us feel vulnerable or uncomfortable, you need to give time for the initial emotional reaction to pass. And so if you find yourself on the receiving end of feedback, recognize that it might take hours or days or weeks for you to really process the feedback and decide then what you want to do with it. So the first step is, is hearing it for the first time, having your initial emotional reaction, then sort of giving some time for the emotions to subside and for rational thought to catch up. You know, for all of its wonders, cognition is much slower than emotion, and we need to give ourselves some time and space.