perfect life daily

“When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you, that means they’ve given up.” -Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

We are all on a quest to make sense of the world we live in. We give meanings to things, seeking an understanding of our experiences, with the goal of achieving our individual ideals of comfort. At the same time, if you’re reading this blog, I’ll make a guess that you also have a desire to grow and be your best in whatever you choose to do.  Yet, with these two opposing forces, how do we balance our desire for comfort with the discomfort that often accompanies growth and change?

This balancing act can get tough sometimes, especially when we don’t know how to navigate the landscape that will bring us to the perfect life we want to have. Luckily, there are mentors, teachers, friends, even foes, that give us great opportunities to tweak ourselves so we can experience the perfect life, as defined by each of us. However, if these opportunities are so great and wonderful, why does it feel so funky when we receive criticism or advice?

Why Is Good Advice So Hard to Swallow?

Constructive criticism or advice can make us cringe. When we receive constructive criticism or advice, it can be very disorienting because it disrupts a rhythm of living and way of being that we have developed over time. From a young age, when we start to distinguish between comfort and discomfort, we set ourselves on a constant quest to go about in the world as comfortably as possible. Actually, we become quite good at it! So, if we’re so good at creating comfortable situations for ourselves, why do they never seem to last for too long?

Comfort and Discomfort Comes in Cycles

As comfortable as we want to be at all times, our comfort level will usually not be the highest priority when it comes to our daily interactions with others. If we want to grow and expand, this input from others in the form of constructive criticism or advice is absolutely necessary if we want to grow and achieve in any timely fashion. There are tasks to accomplish and goals to achieve!

A boss, coach or significant other may come along and offer constructive criticism or advice, and it disrupts the comfort equilibrium in the way we live. When this disruption happens, a response comes about that could take different forms.

What Does a Disrupted Response Look Like?

Responses can generally be directed inwards or outwards.

We may respond by beating ourselves up. “I’m so stupid. How could I have been so ridiculous?!” or “I’m just not fit for this thing or that.”

Or, we could respond by pointing a finger or blowing someone off. “He doesn’t know what he talking about!” or “Who the hell does she think she is?! Telling me I should do it a different way!”

In our relentless quest to make sense of everything and be comfortable, our egos make up a story about how someone is saying we’re not good enough. Depending on how well we can distinguish “truth” from “fiction”, the advice may still have a strong emotional impact and what is simply good advice quickly gets perceived as an attack on the person we are.

We mentally curl up into a little ball for fear of, or lash out to prevent “being attacked” again. As a result, we shy away from trying new things and from expanding our context. Ultimately, from fully experiencing the world and fully realizing our Highest Self.

Repeating this pattern often enough will cause us to continuously take the biggest risk we could ever take in our lives…Playing it Safe!

Danger of Playing it Safe

If we’re not made aware that the people around us that care for us offer advice because they want us to do well in life, the world becomes a very harsh place. At every turn there’s a threat and we live our lives expecting to be attacked.

This puts us constantly in a defensive position

If we don’t develop a perspective on advice that advances us, we end up spending all our time looking for security and safety. Eventually we get into the habit of never giving ourselves a chance to discover the greatness that lies within because we’re so worried about keeping ourselves “safe” from advice or criticisms.

Sometimes, one dramatic event can be the defining reason why everything else in life doesn’t work, if we allow that to be so.

However, when we can learn to welcome advice, knowing that everyone around us is sharing and helping because they want us to win in life, then the world turns into a rich, fun, and abundant place. Creativity abounds, possibilities are endless, solutions are available.

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