How to display a healthy attitude to criticism

 

1. Healthy propaganda that promotes being grateful for all accurate criticism:

“In criticizing, the teacher is hoping to teach. That’s all.” (Bankei)

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” (Winston Churchill)

“I was interested to read about Marina Semyonova, a great Russian dancer and teacher, who devised a novel way of selecting her students. It was a clever test for mindset. As a former student tells it, ‘Her students first have to survive a trial period while she satches to see how you react to praise and to correction. Those more responsive to correction are deemed worthy’.” (from Mindset: The New Psychology of Successby Carol Dweck, p 23-4)