I don't know if you had this experience of asking for feedback, but you know, I remember
I used to have these experiences where I asked people for feedback on a paper or on some
presentation or whatever it is I needed some help with.
And the response I would get is, oh yeah, that's good.
Oh yeah, I liked it.
Oh, that's nice.
Or I would get feedback like, you know, it was okay.
Whatever.
I don't know, I wasn't really feeling it.
And then sometimes I would get detailed feedback like, oh, I would change up this word here
and that word there.
And that's about it.
And then I would be left there thinking, man, I mean, I'm grateful that you took a look
and then gave me feedback, but I'm not sure what to do with this feedback.
I'm not sure what it helps me to change, at least figure out what to do going forward.
So let's talk about this.
What does it look like to get useful feedback?
You know what this is.
This is The Pop Out and I'm your host Albert Shin.
And today I wanted to talk about how to actually garner useful feedback, right?
So I usually find that when you ask people for feedback, they don't really know exactly
what to say unless they had some sort of training or experience in how to give quality feedback.
So one of the things I've often done with students is to work on how they, if they're
looking for feedback from others, how they can actually elicit feedback that is going
to be useful for them, right?
And by useful, what I mean is whether good or bad, whether positive or not, right, the
feedback helps them generate the right ideas for the kind of changes that they would like
to make or the things that they would like to keep in whatever they're asking feedback
on, right?
So I'm going to use specifically written works, right, like papers as an example in this episode.
But I want you to start thinking like this applies to just basically anything that you
might be looking to get some help on, right?
So what does useful feedback look like?
All right, so if we kind of pan out and then look at the process as a whole, right, what
is the whole purpose of a feedback?
Well, the feedback you get is supposed to be information that you could then use to
improve whatever it is that you're trying to improve.
In this case, let's say a paper you wrote for class, okay?
You're trying to make improvements on it, you're trying to make it better in some ways,
okay?
So a feedback is helpful if it serves that purpose and the feedback is not helpful if
it doesn't actually help make those changes, okay?
So this is the bigger picture, right?
So then what are you really looking for when you're asking for feedback?
You're not looking for affirmation, right?
Now you might be, it was like a personal need yourself, you might need somebody to affirm
you so that you feel a little more confident about what you produce, right?
But when you're asking for feedback, the actual point of asking for feedback is not so much
to affirm your sense of self, but rather is to get real insight from somebody else for
things that you might not see yourself and things, factors, right, changes, notice like
little details about your work that with the right kind of changes will actually help to
make it a better version than what it was, right?
So if that's what you're really looking for, right, if you're not just looking for affirmation,
but you're actually looking to get real useful feedback, you know, that should guide the
kind of questions that you ask because, you know, when you leave somebody with just give
me feedback, right, then depending on the person, they might not necessarily know what
to do exactly, right?
This is actually a struggle for teachers as well, right?
Like, I mean, I do this all the time with students ask me for feedback, right?
I usually follow up and I've gotten to the habit of trying to do so is that ask them,
right, what kind of feedback are you looking for, right?
Or if it's something where in the context of a particular class, I kind of have an idea
of what they're looking for, right?
If it's in the context of grades or why they got a particular grade, then I could elaborate
on the things that impacted their grade on a particular paper, okay?
But without those context clues or without my prompting and asking for specification
on what kind of feedback they're looking for, a lot of times when you just throw it out
there, like, hey, give me some feedback, people don't really know how to respond.
People really don't know how to respond.
They know to either say good, bad, okay, right?
They might give some vague description of stuff that they noticed, okay?
But not everyone is trained to give good feedback.
And so you're going to have to prompt them into giving you some useful feedback here,
okay?
So what are the kinds of things that will be helpful for you to ask when you are asking
for feedback?
Well, the key here is going to be this.
You need to be specific about the kinds of elements that you want feedback on.
Let me explain exactly what that means, right?
So let's say you hand them a paper for a class, okay?
Let's say it's an English class, maybe you're analyzing some poem or something, right?
There are several things you could ask, right?
So one is you might want to know whether or not what you say actually is coherent, right?
Does it make sense, right?
Am I all over the place and is what I'm describing or explaining just extremely confusing and
muddy, okay?
One way you could elicit feedback on that particular element is to ask somebody, hey,
as you're giving me feedback, I want you to try to focus on one particular thing here,
right?
Which is, is what I'm writing here, does it actually make sense to you, right?
And to make sure that it makes sense to you, would you be able to summarize what I said
in your own words so that I can see that it actually made sense to you, right?
This comes from like active listening, right?
So if you know anything about what it means to be an active listener, right?
When you're actively listening, you're not just passively like hearing things going into
your ear, rather you're taking in that information, you're processing it, and you're making sense
of it.
And you should be, if you're actively listening well, you should be able to regurgitate in
your own words, right?
Not just like robotically repeat what the other person said, but be able to explain
in your own words what the other person was saying, right?
So it's the same idea here, but in with regards to writing then, you would then ask like,
hey, did this what I wrote here, did it make sense to you, right?
Just to make sure that it made sense to you, make sure that what I wanted to express is
what the reader actually got, right?
Can you actually tell me what you think I was saying in this particular paper just so
I can know, right?
OK, so notice something here.
The question you ask gives the reader an idea of what kind of feedback to give you, and
they have a clear sense of what they should be looking for, what you're curious about
in terms of the kind of feedback that you're wanting to receive.
And notice that when you prompt somebody in this way, the response that they'll give you
is something that you can definitely use, right?
For instance, if you find out like, hey, they had the sense that you were saying one thing,
but that's not what you were trying to convey, then you know in the least that there's some
discrepancy, right?
There's some discrepancy in what you wrote versus what the reader is reading, right?
Which means there's some issue here in the communication, right?
Either you wrote something in a confusing way or misleading way, or the way that is
written is a little bit confusing, and so the readers could interpret it in several
different ways, right?
There's some issue that is leading to this discrepancy, right?
So that helps you understand, right?
Furthermore, if you know what it is that they got wrong about what you're trying to convey,
you know exactly where in the writing to go to make those corrections, right?
Because it's whatever it is that they got wrong, right?
So imagine they were trying to repeat back to you what they thought you were saying.
They got the first half of the paper, right, spot on, right?
Then you know the first half of the paper looks good, right?
At least it makes sense.
Second half, oh man, maybe they made a bunch of mistakes in the second half of that paper,
right?
Then you know that the second half of the paper needs work, right?
This helps you in the feedback you receive, right?
It really helps you to focus your attention on specific things so that you're not just
looking through the paper wondering what it is that you need to change.
You know exactly what you need to change.
You need to change the parts where it was confusing.
You need to change the parts where the writing was misleading, right?
Or where the logic of your explanation just started to go off the rails, right?
You know exactly where to focus your attention, what to change, okay?
So notice something here, right?
When you ask somebody for a general, like, can you give me feedback, you don't know what
you're going to get in return.
Whereas if you ask the more specific question, right, hey, can you at least try to tell me
if this whole essay, right, the point I'm trying to make, does it make sense, right?
Can you tell me that it actually makes sense to the reader by regurgitating it, right,
in your own words so that I know that the message is getting through, right?
Then you know exactly where your explanations might be going off the rails so you know exactly
where to focus your attention and what kind of parts of your explanation you need to change,
okay?
All right.
Secondly, you might want to also ask questions about, and these are just kind of big pictures,
but you might also want to ask questions about the general overall, let's say it's an argumentative
essay, like does the argument sound convincing?
Or does my explanation, is it convincing, right?
And this actually goes to something a little different than just doesn't make sense, right?
That argument could make sense, but what you're really asking is, is this a good argument
that I'm making?
Is this one that's convincing because I am giving sufficient evidence in support of whatever
idea I'm presenting, okay?
Or am I giving sufficient detail in explaining some sort of concept I'm trying to explain,
right?
Whatever it is you're doing in that paper, right, you want to also check to make sure
that the reasoning that you're giving and the evidence you're giving, the support you're
giving, the examples you're using, that those things actually do the job that you want it
to do.
Whether or not it makes sense, right?
It could make sense, but you might be looking for feedback specifically on whether it's
a well formulated argument, okay?
So then how do you elicit feedback like that?
Well, one thing you can do is just ask them, like, do you think it's a good argument?
But I think the more detailed question here is going to be helpful, which is, how convinced
are you with this argument, let's say on a scale of one to 10, right?
And furthermore, do you think there are ways to improve the argument, right?
What you're doing by asking questions like this is eliciting this in the feedback giver,
right?
The person who's reading in their head, like, hmm, maybe it is a good argument, but what's
more important is the details of, you know, what about the argument makes it a weak argument
and what kinds of things can be added to the argument to make it a stronger argument, okay?
So what you're implanting into that reader's head is, hey, as you're reading this, I'm
trying to prime you to focus your attention on the quality of the argument, okay?
And not just focus on the quality of the argument and then give me a thumbs up or thumbs down,
but I'm prompting you to give me more specifics about, A, what goes wrong in the argument
and B, your own suggestions, right?
You're kind of eliciting that actual feedback that you can use, right?
Where they say, hey, actually, I think that this sort of example is not the best.
Maybe you could replace it with another example like this.
And then they're the ones who give you these ideas, right?
So it does a couple of things, right?
Again, it gets down to the nitty gritty, it gets down to the specifics of, hey, you know,
like this particular part of the argument is what needs work.
That particular part of the argument is what needs work.
Oh, this part of the argument might be good, but it could use some improvements, right?
So you're getting the specifics here that we were seeking, right, the last time around.
But there's one additional thing you're getting, which is you're getting them to help you by
providing you with examples and suggestions, okay?
You're asking them to at least prompt ideas, not saying that you're necessarily going to
use them, but at least to generate some ideas of what it would look like for this to be
a better argument or a better explanation, right?
What would enhance the quality of this paper?
Okay.
And by their giving you feedback, you get a better sense of what it is that they're
seeing.
But more importantly, you're getting the catalyst for your generating ideas for how you might
want to go about changing your work, okay?
So you really want to kind of, again, notice there's a commonality in these questions,
right?
You're not asking general vague questions.
You're asking much more targeted questions about specific types of feedback you're trying
to receive.
For one, you're trying to get feedback on the overall, right, does the explanation actually
make sense or is what I'm saying doesn't make sense, okay?
Is it confusing?
Is it misleading, right?
And also, you're asking them like, hey, what's the quality of the content that I'm presenting?
And you're also listening feedback on exactly how it may or may not be a better version
than it is right now, right?
So you're looking for all of those details in trying to figure out what to work on and
how to work on it.
Got this, right?
I think one of the things that students often ask for when they're looking for feedback
is they go straight to the nitty gritty details of, you know, what is it, like the grammar
of it all and the diction.
You know, those things, if you're thinking about the editing phase of any paper, right,
that comes way at the end, right?
That's a pretty straightforward fix.
That's pretty easy to, that kind of editing is actually fairly easy.
That kind of feedback is, you could get a lot of feedback, right?
But also, that kind of feedback is honestly the most shallow kind of feedback, right?
That's like, you know, tying, crossing your t's and dotting your i's.
That's really what it's doing.
But before you even get there, you need to focus on the actual content of your work,
right?
You need to focus on the thing.
And again, it depends on the, it depends on exactly what the work is, right?
If it's a presentation, you're going to ask about specifics that impact the quality of
a presentation, right?
Things like timing or your voice level or, right, now you could go down a list, right?
What constitutes a good whatever it is you're doing, right?
A good speech, a good poem, a good analysis, a good research paper, a good whatever it
is you're doing, right?
And you could go down the list of those qualities and then get the person who's giving you feedback
to focus in on each of those qualities, right?
One of the things you can do, I mean, this is going to be a little strange, but you could
give them a set of criteria of things to look for, right?
That's one thing you could do.
But I usually find that it's just, it's good enough to ask a few fairly straightforward
questions about what you want to focus your attention on, okay?
Now I recommend that you do this in phases.
And the reason I ask, I say that you should do it in phases is that if, and this happens
to me when I'm giving feedback to students, if I'm trying to focus on everything that
I could give feedback on, it's just overwhelming.
It's too much, right?
It's too much.
And then so what I end up doing is I end up splitting my attention or I spend a lot of
time on the feedback.
Like I go through it like three, four times and it's exhausting, right?
You don't want to put that kind of work on somebody who's trying to help you out, right?
So my recommendation is actually just to do it in phases or maybe you could spread out
the work to different people, okay?
But the first couple of questions that I suggested you, sets of questions that I suggested you
ask, notice something about those two is that it's not just eliciting those detailed feedback,
but it's also questions about the overall feel, content, direction, organization of
the paper, not the nitty gritty, right?
And there's a reason for it, right?
In the process of editing, like I said, the details come in last.
The way you want to actually approach the feedback process is you want to start with
the more general feedback.
You want to start with the big picture.
And so you want to ask about the big picture first.
Does it make sense?
Is the argument a good one?
Can the argument be better, right?
Are there things that I should be adding to it?
What might that look like?
What is missing from this explanation, right?
What parts would you like a deeper explanation on, right?
What parts would have been more helpful to give more evidence on, right?
Like those are the general questions you want to focus on in the first one or two read throughs,
I would say, at least the first two, okay?
And then afterwards, you could get into more detailed questions about basic structure,
about diction, about grammar, right?
Those factors, right?
Those factors could come in afterwards, right?
That includes, for instance, things like footnotes, right?
Like if you have to write footnotes or citations, right?
Is the citation correct?
Can you check those?
Do that at the very end, okay?
What matters first is getting the actual content, the deeper content, to get that correct.
And then you could tinker with the bells and whistles, right?
That's what the grammar and all that would essentially be, okay?
By the way, another important question to ask is another, so I'm thinking about general
big picture questions.
Like I said, it depends on exactly what you're asking for feedback on, right?
But especially for things like papers, right?
One of the things that are really helpful to kind of ask about in the first several
phases is a transition.
And this kind of goes to, does the argument actually make sense, right?
Or does the explanation make sense, right?
You want the transitions, you want them to focus in on transitions because transitions
often highlight how it is that you're moving from one thought to another.
That's essentially what a transition is, right?
It's not necessarily paragraphs, right?
They might give you the feedback of breaking these ideas up into smaller paragraphs.
But again, it's not about the grammar of it all, right?
Or rather like just following some set of rules about how to write a paper.
But rather, it's that the breaking up into paragraphs in a meaningful way is just a reflection
of something about the transition that's not making sense, right?
So another question that could be really helpful in asking is, does it make sense how I move
from one idea to another?
Can you identify, right?
Again, the specific questions here are really helpful.
Can you identify for me where you think these transitions are happening?
And what you're looking for here, again, is any discrepancy between what you're wanting
to communicate and what the reader actually is identifying for themselves.
And if there's a discrepancy, that means there's a problem in the communication here, right?
That means that there could be something you could do in your writing to improve the way
you convey what you're trying to convey, okay?
So start with the big picture, okay?
Then ask in rounds later, right?
So again, this is why it's helpful to spread out the work because you don't put the burden
on one person.
I personally love to go to different people for different things, right?
I might have some people who are very good about details.
I could go to them for things like grammar, spelling errors, things like that, right?
And then I have other friends who are big picture thinkers, right?
If you're coming to me for feedback, okay, I am terrible with details.
I'll be honest with you, right?
I'll probably miss a bunch of minor errors here and there when it comes to some of the
details or spelling or punctuation, right?
So I am not the best person to go to for that, but I can definitely, I feel confident when
it comes to overall big picture transition, the nitty-gritty of the argument and whether
or not the argument actually is a good one, whether it's well supported, right?
Those kinds of questions I do well at in terms of giving feedback.
So oftentimes what I would tell students is, hey, you could come for me for this, but then
there's people at the writing center or these other places you could go where you could
get better help when it comes to other aspects.
You could do the same thing.
You could utilize that technique and what that allows for you to do is to, because you
turn different people for different things, it unburdens each person from trying to do
too much and so they're more likely to help you out again in the future, right?
It's not asking too much of them, okay?
All right, does this all make sense?
All right, the second thing I want to, the next thing I want to point out is this, okay?
When you're asking for feedback, you need to go to more than one person, okay?
And this is not just because of what I just said, which is that different people are better
at certain things, right?
But rather, there are many aspects of writing where it helps you to see insight from numerous
different people with different perspectives and different way of reading to make sure
that you're hitting your core audience in a way that makes sense for the entire audience.
Okay, so let me break it down and explain exactly what that means, okay?
You might have a writing style that appeals to one particular type of person, okay?
But here's the thing, if you're writing for an audience where it's meant to be for a broader
audience where it's just not that target demographic, then you want to make sure that your writing
speaks to the range of different people, right?
What that means is that as you seek feedback, you want to keep the audience you have in
mind and then garner feedback from that particular audience, right?
And there's going to be a range of them.
There's going to be a range of people that you might want to speak to, people who are
different in the way that they read and interpret and process writing, okay?
And doing so allows you to get the insight from multiple directions so that when you
make those changes and then you go back to them for another read through, if it's like
thumbs up from all of them, then you know that you have hit your target demographic.
You have hit the range of people that you want the essay to speak to, okay?
Now this is kind of hard sometimes, especially in high school, right?
Because in high school, you might have one particular teacher that you're writing the
particular paper for and they might be very particular in their own way.
But I think the mark of a good writer is practicing this ability to speak to a larger audience
because it will give you the kind of flexibility and the ability to kind of navigate the range
of different people that might read the same work in different ways, okay?
One of the things that happens, especially in college, and I get this a lot from students,
is, hey, I was told to write in one way from a high school teacher.
I was told to write a different way from this other college professor and now you're telling
me to write in a different way, right?
And then I always tell them the same thing, which is, look, the mark of a good writer
is knowing how to write to the audience, right?
So you need to know who your target audience is.
And it might be the particular instructor at your particular school, but if that's your
writing ability, it's limited to that particular audience, then you're going to have a lot
of trouble writing when there's a different teacher that has a different set of expectations,
right?
So I always tell students, learn to be flexible because that's really the mark of a good writer.
You want to learn how to write for different purposes, for different audiences, right?
You want to know how to write for a particular teacher, right, if that's what matters.
But if you're, let's say, writing a speech for the high school audience at the graduation,
right, then again, that's your target audience.
You better make sure you're not speaking to just like five of those students, right?
You want to make sure you're speaking to the range of different personalities and backgrounds
and all the different variations that exist in a student body, right?
And it's going to be the same thing.
When you get to college, depending on the subject, there are certain set norms within
different subjects.
So you're going to have to write differently for different audiences.
And that's the expectation.
That's what you should be doing as a good writer, right?
You shouldn't be writing the same way every single time.
That's ridiculous, right?
If I'm writing for a newspaper article where I'm giving my opinion on something, I'm going
to write differently than if I'm writing a research paper that I'm trying to send out
for publication.
And that's going to be different from if I'm trying to write a book for a New York Times
bestseller, right?
The writing style should change because the audiences are very different in those different
works, right?
And then so, you know, you want to make sure that you don't just speak to a narrow set
of readers.
You want to make sure that your writing speaks to the entirety of the audience you have in
mind, right?
Now, you might have your own personal writing flair, right, the way that you write that's
distinct from the way that the other people write.
But at the same time, right, you want to try to check to make sure that you're not just
speaking to a narrow subset of people and rather hitting the entirety of the target
audience, okay?
So it's going to be helpful to get feedback again from multiple people, okay, from multiple
people.
And that's on top of that, you know, no one person is perfect, so, you know, every person
will provide a different kind of insight, right?
We'll pick up on something different.
Okay, here's the last thing.
Here's the last thing.
I can't stress this enough, okay?
The feedback that you receive, okay, if it's not useful, it is your job to ask questions
to elicit better feedback, okay?
It is your job.
It's nobody else's job, okay?
Which means, let's say you went to a bunch of different people now, you got a bunch of
feedback, and then the couple of feedbacks you got were, right, it was just like smiley
face or something in one space, right, in some area, right, and you're like, I don't
know what it means, okay?
If you don't know what it means, you're the one asking other people for help, right?
You need to be the one to follow up and be like, hey, you put a smiley face here, I'm
guessing it's a positive response from you, can you point out exactly what it is that
is making you smile, right?
What is it that you are reacting to, okay?
Or you can be more specific and be like, can you underline the sentence, right, or highlight
it, okay?
You know, can you explain to me, you know, right, if it's something I should keep, for
instance, okay?
A lot of people don't know this, but you know, you're looking for a range of feedback.
Like, I think one of the questions that you can ask that is really helpful is, you know,
even if you wrote a really good quality paper and it's in like the third draft and it's
looking fairly polished, right, you could always ask the question, right, which is, what part
of my writing do you really like, right?
And can you specify what that is, like underline it, highlight it, right?
And then can you tell me what you like about it, okay?
This does a couple of things, right?
One, you're not receiving only the feedback of things that you should change, right?
But rather, you're getting good information, you're getting information about the aspects
of your writing that you should keep, right?
You could even ask them, like, should I keep it the way it is or should I change this,
right?
Sometimes the feedback will be, no, no, no, don't change it.
This is perfect.
I like the way it is.
I like, and then they'll explain to you exactly what they like about it.
I like the humor you use here.
I like the way that you phrase this idea.
I like the clarity in what you wrote, okay?
That kind of feedback is super duper helpful because here's one of the things that also
happens during, you know, feedback time, right?
You get all this feedback and then you know what you need to change, but all the stuff
that they didn't comment on, you don't know what to do with, like, should I change this?
Should I leave it alone, right?
You're not sure what to do with it.
Having some assurance about what they liked and what they thought you should keep or what
they thought you did well, it gives you two things, right?
One, it tells you what to keep, but it also tells you here's what they're picking up
on that I do well.
And in essence, here's the thing that I should do more of, right?
That's really what they're telling you, right?
If they're giving you feedback on things that you did well, you want to try to, you know,
make sure that you do that again and again and again, right?
You want to know, right?
If I do this well, then oh yeah, you're going to be motivated to try to do it some more,
okay?
Because you're realizing that it's hitting the right chords, okay?
So it's really helpful to get that kind of feedback, but sometimes you might have to
ask the deeper question.
You might have to ask the more, you know, question of specificity.
You might have to follow up with people.
And this is something I think often people don't like to do, right?
It feel like you're hassling them.
You feel like, right, all these, I will tell you this, right?
Psychologically speaking, this is something we learned about people.
People like to be helpful.
People like to be useful, okay?
Asking other people for help brings them more joy than you think, okay?
So I think you should not be afraid to ask for help.
It's not a knock on you.
It doesn't mean you're incapable or anything like that.
But rather, just think of it like this.
I'm giving a gift to the other person, right?
People tend to want to be helpful.
And if you ask them for help, they feel helpful.
They feel useful.
It brings joy to their life for being able to have helped you in this way.
So feel free to go up to them afterwards and be like, hey, you know, I would like to get
more information about what you had in mind here because I thought your feedbacks were
really helpful.
They're going to be wanting to go ahead and give you that assistance, okay?
At least I would say most of the time, okay?
There might be exceptions.
Who knows?
Some people, there might be things going on in their life.
Who knows why they're not wanting to, okay?
But most people tend to try to be very accommodating in this way, okay?
All right.
Here is the last thing I want to point out, okay?
Okay, so now you saw feedback from a bunch of different people.
You're asking questions that are specific.
When you follow up with them, you're making sure that you're asking more detailed questions,
okay?
And here's the last thing, okay?
Anytime you ask for feedback, always keep in mind that at the end of the day, you have
ownership of your own work, okay?
What does that mean?
That means that feedbacks are just that.
They're feedback, right?
They're opinions, they're thoughts, there's ideas that others are presenting to you.
You can take it or leave it.
That's up to you.
You're the artist here.
You're the creator, okay?
Which means two things, right?
One, don't blame other people for changes you made on your work, right?
So if somebody gives you suggestions and then you incorporate that suggestion and then it
turns out that maybe it wasn't the best creative direction to go and then so you get poor marks
or something, right?
Don't blame them.
They just gave you the feedback you were asking for, okay?
You own your own shit, okay?
You own it, all right?
You created it, you decided which feedback to take and use and which ones not to, okay?
That is your choice, okay?
This is your work.
This is not on anybody else.
This is solely on you, okay?
And this is important because if you want to be the kind of person that people want
to give useful feedback, people want to actually spend the energy to actually look through
your work and then try to help you, okay?
If you want to be the kind of person that people want to do that for, then you should
not be the kind of person who blames them when things don't go quite as you wanted it
to, okay?
They're providing feedback, which is exactly what you asked for.
What you do with that feedback, that's on you, okay?
Again, you need to take ownership, okay?
But here's the other thing that it does, okay?
It gives you a great deal of agency.
It gives you the control.
It gives you the power to know that you do not have to take the feedback and actually
incorporate it, okay?
You might have a difference in opinion.
You might have your own reasons for not incorporating certain feedback, right?
Even if it's coming from a credible person, you might have your own reasons for it, okay?
That's fine.
You don't have to incorporate all the feedback that others give, right?
When I give feedback on personal statements or on essays at school, right?
Like, you know, it's like, here's just here's feedback.
Here's some things that I noticed that I saw, right?
Here's the things that maybe I might want changed in a certain way, right?
But you might have your own reasons for not doing it, right?
And you might actually be correct depending on the specifics, right?
You don't have to do any of the things I say you should, I suggest you do, okay?
In fact, this entire podcast, anything I say, right?
You don't have to take any of the advice or feedback that I give you.
You don't have to do any of it, right?
That's on you, right?
But here's the thing, that should be a form of empowerment for you because that tells
you that you are ultimately the stopping point, right?
You're the one who gets to make the ultimate decision.
You have that power.
Nobody has power over you and the work that you create.
You get to dictate what you want your work to look like, right?
Which means that you get to ignore some feedback, right?
Now you should, I highly recommend you have a good reason for doing so, right?
But you could also adjust some of the feedback.
Maybe somebody points something out and you're like, I don't agree, but they made you think
about something a little different that now you're going to run with and then so you're
going to make some other changes.
That's not what was actually, you know, suggested to you.
That's fine too, right?
Feedback is just that, right?
Take it or leave it, okay?
That's up to you.
Which means that, and here's the key, right?
You don't have to be worried about negative feedback.
You don't have to be worried about criticism, okay?
I don't want you to think, this is one of the reasons that people don't actually seek
feedback in the first place, is that they are worried about other people critiquing
them.
They feel embarrassed about their work.
They feel worried that other people will not like their work, okay?
Here's what's great.
If the control of that power is in your hands, then it doesn't matter what they say because
it's just their perspective and you can take it, you can leave it, it's up to you.
You could ignore it.
You can incorporate it.
You can do whatever you want with it, okay?
It is not an attack on you.
It is not a knock on you.
It doesn't mean that you are less than or you are worse at something.
That is not at all what it means, okay?
We need to create a culture where receiving feedback and criticism is not necessarily
a bad thing.
But what I hope I showed you here is that when you ask the right sorts of questions,
you're not going to get the kind of feedback that just leaves you feeling shitty, right?
The feedback you should be receiving isn't, I like this thing or I don't like it.
That should not be the feedback you receive.
If you ask the right questions, then the feedback you should be receiving are specific detailed
explanations of what could change, what should change, what should stay the same, and why,
right?
The why part here is going to be the most helpful in getting you to better understand
what other people might be seeing.
But at the end of the day, it's not really a knock on you.
It's you trying to get this sort of information.
It's like you're crowdsourcing information so that you can produce the best work in your
eyes, not in other people's, but in your eyes, okay?
So when you seek feedback and you receive it, even if they might be pointing to things
that you completely disagree with, okay?
That is not a reason for you to get upset.
You might be upset, but you could go to therapy and then try to work on figuring out why that
is, okay?
What's important here is that they give you information, and now it's your choice what
you want to do with that information, okay?
And sometimes the best thing to do with the feedback you received is just simply to ignore
it.
But that is your choice.
I'll tell you this.
I ignore a lot of shit that people tell me, okay?
Doesn't mean I'm right, but it's my decision, right?
So I hope you have that kind of agency over your work, regardless of whatever feedback
you receive.
I hope that that opens up the door for you to being more open to critique, okay?
Because a critique is meant to give you insight.
It's meant to help you.
It's not meant to hurt you.
And if somebody is doing something where they're giving you feedback where all it does is just
clown on you and ridicule you and put you down, either you should be asking different
questions or you should just not go to that person, right?
It's not useful feedback.
It's not useful at all, okay?
So I hope that you can use this as an impetus for you to try to get that sort of feedback
from others and to kind of accept critique in your life, okay?
Because I'll be honest with you.
If you cannot acknowledge critique, right?
If you cannot acknowledge other people disagreeing with you, that's probably a sign that you
are a narcissist of some kind, right?
It might be an indication that you have a hard time receiving your views that are opposite
yours or conflicting with yours or things that might not be the most flattering of you,
right?
I hope that you receive enough love in your life that you do not respond by crashing out
when somebody gives you negative feedback, okay?
So accept that you're the one in charge.
You're the one who gets to make the decision, okay?
Feedback is just nothing more than additional information for you to use.
And accept that it is meant for your best interests, right?
And you can accept it or not, but that's at the end of the day up to you.
And you are the final decider of whether or not that fits with the kind of purpose or
what you're trying to accomplish, what the work you're trying to get feedback on, okay?
So good luck to you as you try to make those strides in your writing or whatever else you're
receiving feedback on.