Cameron Herold says thought leaders and speakers shouldn't take feedback too seriously, whether it's praise or criticism. Tim Ferriss warned him when his TEDx talk went viral that comments are just fleeting opinions from people with time to share them. Reframe criticism as either evidence someone cares or just another opinion worth hearing but not obsessing over.
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Just thinking a little bit about feedback that you get as a thought leader or an author or a speaker or even just somebody on social media who is sharing ideas or opinions. Be careful that you don't take any of the negative constructive criticism too seriously. The reality is opinions are like assholes. We've all got one. And a lot of times when people are sharing the constructive criticism, they're maybe just sharing it because it's a fleeting feeling or an idea that they have. And often people are sharing it just as a point of view or wanting to be able to express themselves. So I actually learned this idea about 11 years ago when my TEDx talk was launched and Tim Ferriss and I were friends back then. Tim sent me a note and he said, hey dude, don't take any of the comments too seriously. He said, Your TEDx talk is about to go viral. He'd just seen that Ashton Kusher had just pushed it out as one of his top 10 TED talks. So he said, be careful with reading any of the comments and taking them too seriously. He said the negative comments are, are more often than not meant to be constructive criticism or somebody who's just sharing their opinion, somebody who's sharing a fleeting idea or just want to be heard. And he said, likewise, don't take any of the positive comments too seriously as well. He said those can go to your head. And the reality is anybody who's leaving those unsolicited comments has lots of free time on their hands and they just want to share. But he said it's just as dangerous to take the negative comments too seriously and let them hurt you as it is to let the positive comments and praise get to your head and kind of, you know, that can take you in the wrong direction as well. So just kind of filter out both the negative and positive comments as just comments and constructive, and they're good. So one of the ways that I always take constructive criticism, or try to, is that the person giving it to me cares about me. Maybe they're a loving partner or a spouse or a friend or a sibling, whatever. My mom, you know, giving me that loving, constructive feedback because they care about me. Or it's just another way to look at it, is it's just feedback. It's just like an opinion that's cool. I can take that as, as like a way to cook a steak or a way to make a salad. It's just another person's opinion. So hopefully that's helpful to not take anything too seriously that you don't need to sit and worry about it again. That whole saying of opinions, like, everybody's got one. Um, or as Danny just wrote, everyone has an opinion behind the keyboard. So the opinions are worth hearing and worth sharing, but they're not worth stewing about and worth ruining your day. They're also not worth feeling super amazing about when you get all the positive comments, because those can really twist you around. If you get so excited about the positive, it makes you sometimes feel like the negative should have more weight than they should as well.
