Mindset Makeover: Tackle Criticism Like a Pro | 13 Minutes with James Franco

Good morning, Believe Nation! Today's message is learn how to deal with criticism. Over to you, James Franco.

You know, when you're a creative person and you're putting your work out in the world, sometimes that criticism is biting, sometimes it's harmful. And so you just kind of have to be aware of that. And one of the reasons— and figure out a way to kind of deal with that and figure out who you're going to listen to and who you're not going to listen to for your feedback. Because I do believe feedback is incredibly important. And it's one of the reasons that when I teach, I also design my classes this way so that they can put their work out into the world. That's the final step. Seeing how your work is being read by audiences, by critics if you care to listen to them. And so, and that, that is the final ingredient that will make you better. Because if you're making movies, you're making television, you're making videos, whatever you're making, you know, my guess is you're making it to communicate for an audience to read it. You're not just making it for yourself to kind of watch, unless, you know, you're making like, I don't know, porn of you and your partner or something to get off on. Like, you're making it for an audience. And so understanding how it's communicating to that audience is incredibly important. So I do value feedback, but you just have to under— like, one of the things you learn in any MFA program, you know, if it's writing or filmmaking or art or whatever, is because they're usually run in a workshop manner, you know, you're getting feedback from your classmates and your teachers on your work constantly. And one of the things you learn in that system is, well, his feedback is always lame. He does not understand what I'm trying to do. He's wrapped up in his own thing or he's angry about the way that I dress or something. Like his feedback is worthless. Okay. But she is always giving me good feedback and actually when I listen to her, it makes myself better and so, duh. And you just apply that to the larger world like, okay, this critic has some little drum to beat and he just doesn't whatever, he's off on his own thing and he can, you know, beat the James Franco hate drum, fine, I don't care. This critic, you know, gets it and if I look, oh, it made some great insight, okay, that will help me on the next one. And so you just have to kind of learn who to listen to and who not to listen to. And if somebody's telling you just plain out, don't do that, you're not allowed to write books, you're not allowed to direct, like I would just give the advice of don't listen to them.

I think this is a really important topic because as entrepreneurs, we're going to get faced with a ton of criticism as we're trying to build something new, put it out into the market, try to get some feedback, try to build something. We're doing something that's never been done before. Ideally, as entrepreneurs, we like creating new stuff. And when you're doing that, you're going to make a lot of mistakes and people don't always like new and they're going to bash you for it. There's two things I want to talk about. The first is you need to understand that to have success as an entrepreneur, you need to combine what you love doing with what adds value to other people. This is the mix. You need both elements, something that you love doing, that you can pour your heart, your energy, your spirit, everything you got, your waking moments, hours, days into making this thing the best it can be because you love it so much, combined with what the market wants. What do your audience want? What do customers want to pay for? You need both to have success in business. Because if you love doing something, you love it, it's your absolute passion, but it adds zero value to other people, then it's great. It's a hobby. It's something that you do for yourself that fills your soul, makes you a better human being. It's awesome, but it's not a business. Where if you're only chasing the market, you're chasing the hottest opportunity, then yeah, you can make a little bit of money in the short term, but if you don't love it, you're never going to be the best at it. You're never going to win that game. You're never going to have a lot of success in business. So you need both the love and the audience acceptance. So the love has to come from inside. The audience acceptance comes from feedback, comes from criticism, comes from talking to customers and understanding what do they want? How can you help them? When I look at the videos that I make on this channel, most of the content and the ideas comes from you guys. What do you want in the next top 10 list? What do you want for the next Believe Life series, right? All of these things come from you guys giving me suggestions and saying, hey, this video could be better. I like that intro. I don't like that intro. Giving me feedback on what I can improve. Now I take all your feedback and criticism and suggestions, and then I see, do I want to do that or not? Do I love it? "Make a top 10 on this person. Make a series on this idea." You know, if I'm not connected to it, I'm not gonna pick it. This is where we are playing our game. We're dancing, right? You have two people in a dance, and that's where you have to always be in harmony between what you really wanna do and what the market wants as well. So the criticism and the feedback is super important to get that harmony happening. The other thing that I wanna talk about quickly is one of my favorite quotes, and it's from Quincy Jones that we did an InSpresso on, and a top 10 on, I think, where he said, "Not one ounce of my self-respect comes from your opinion of me." And I think this is so important, especially for the early stages of an entrepreneur, because as you're building your thing up, you may have this big idea that maybe you don't even really believe in yet either, right? You want to be here, but you're still playing down here, and you're afraid, and you haven't even convinced yourself that you're ready to go there, let alone telling other people about it. And when you tell other people about your idea, they may laugh at you, they may make fun of you, they may tell you all the reasons why it's not gonna work, and so you're afraid to go and tell other people about what you're trying to do. And you need to get help, right? You need people to poke holes in your idea and help you find the path, 'cause you can't do everything yourself. And so understand that you're gonna get criticized. Some people will be really nice about it and really constructive about it and give you a positive message with it, and some people won't. Some people just tell you that it's crap, and they'll insult you over it. But it doesn't mean that they don't necessarily have a point. And you need to differentiate between a personal attack on you versus an attack on the idea and how it can be better. And if somebody personally attacks you, who cares? Like, stop caring so much about what other people think about you. Not one ounce of my self-respect comes from your opinion of me. You don't like my top 10 video?

Okay.

You know, I wrote a great book. I love the book. So far, all the reviews of the book have been pretty good. But if you don't like my book, okay. Like, it's not for every single human being on this planet. And your negative thoughts around my book is not going to make me feel worse about myself or about the amazing piece of work that I created. And if you don't like that I wear a hat sometimes, or you don't like my hoodie or my t-shirt, or think I should be in a suit or anything, it doesn't impact me. I got to do me. I, I don't care. And so learning to be able to handle that, to be able to take criticism in, not let it impact you on a personal self-worth level, and then differentiate between this can actually help me make something better And this is useless because you need to get to the point where you're combining what you love doing, your passion, where you can be the best in the world at potentially with what people want and you can add value to them. Mix these together. That's a successful business. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, how do you handle criticism? What do you do? I'm curious what your thought process is. Leave it down in the comments below. I'm going to join in the discussion. I also want to give a quick shout out to Jonathan Lau. Jonathan, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book. Your one word. It really, really, really, really means a lot to me. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. Hey guys, so I decided to add a couple extra bonus clips just for you around this topic of being able to handle criticism that that I hope you'll enjoy as a bonus.

There's 4 things when someone gives you feedback or criticism, however it's intended, whether ill or positive. And so one is not to take it in, but to kind of catch it. I think of it like a catcher's mitt. If you tell me something, you come across this way, I'll grab it and then I'll look at it and I'll think, okay, is it true? If it's true, cool, I'll put it in and learn from it. If I think it's not true, cool, I'll throw it away. No harm, no foul. I'm not gonna dwell on it, right? And I think everybody needs this in this world 'cause we're all on, most of us are on social media and we're all getting like, you know, all our thoughts are getting picked apart, you know, all the time. So we really need this more than ever. Then the third one is you get it and it's a maybe. Well, I'm not sure. You said this about me. I'm not sure. You know, what do you guys think? You know, what do you think? I'll ask my friends and I'll ask other people and get some feedback. And if it's true, well, cool. Maybe I'll learn from it. If everyone's like, this is total nonsense, ignore that dude, I throw it out. But then there's a fourth one, and this is where the real growth is. Do you know what the fourth one is?

I don't.

The fourth one is you get it, you throw it out. I'm talking to you, and then maybe later I'm talking to, you know, you. I get it, and I'm like, nah, it's not true, I throw it out. And then later I'm talking to someone else, I get it, it's the third time it's come back to me, I throw it out. I'm like, wait, maybe I gotta take this thing a little more seriously, and it becomes a maybe, and then it becomes a yes. And that's when the big real thing is, because you kept ignoring this thing that was in your face. So the best feedback, like where you really grow, is you keep getting the same feedback, you keep dismissing it, at some point you say, wait, maybe they have something. So one way I do this is I get together a group of people and we sit together once a week and talk about the stuff going on in our lives. I find group therapy really powerful because if it's just one-on-one, I can just say I disagree with you. But when 4 or 5 people are saying, hey dude, no, you're really coming off like that, or you're really having this problem in your relationship and maybe need to look at it, and 5 people are saying it, it's pretty hard to dismiss them.

And hip-hop is like, "Yo, he's gay as fuck, dog. Fuck that dude." You know what I mean? Why don't you like him? You know what? He can rap. He got a good story. His flows are cool, for sure. I just don't like him though. And it's so ignorant, it's crazy. So, yeah, years ago, you know what I'm saying, when I first got on blogs and I'd be excited, I'd read comments. But now it's just like, there's no point to read comments. Yeah, don't read the comments.

Don't read the comments.

It's either too positive which can lead you to be big-headed, or it's too negative, which could make you try to create music to get them to stop hating on you. It's like somebody being like, "Yeah, he should rap like this, he should rap like that. I don't like the way he raps." And then the person changes up how they rap to try to make that person like them, and then they're like, "Man, he ain't even being himself," after you change. So it's like you can't win, man. You can't win no matter what you do. So for me, I don't listen to the hate, I don't listen to love too much. I just take it all in stride. I love what I do, and as long as I can wake up every day and feel that, I feel like I'm doing right.

Do you read criticism of yourself?

No, I used to, I used to, and then I realized it wasn't helpful.

Positive or negative?

Mm-hmm.

It's just distraction.

Yeah, I can't— I don't look at anything anymore that's written, whether it's like interviews or— I mean, it's just— it's also just too much focus on yourself.

Mm-hmm.

It's like, I am far from the center of the world, and I don't need to like I need to read about other things. There's a lot of really good things to read about, and I know about myself, and if someone makes a mistake about me, I'm just gonna get upset. So, or if they say something negative, I'm gonna get upset, and if they say something nice, that's friendly, but I also don't need to care. Like, I don't need to base my sense of self on what strangers' opinions of me are. Like, it's important to me that my friends and my family, you know, think that I'm behaving correctly, and they'll let me know if I'm out of line. And everyone else's opinions, like, you know, it's not my business.