Feedback Thoughts

Feedback has always been something that I have had a love/hate relationship with. Similar to what was said in the class discussion, I love getting the ideas to make my work better but I absolutely hate the possibility of someone having something really negative to say about my assignment. For that reason, I really liked these articles and learned a lot about how to balance both of those feelings when it comes to feedback for the class.

There are a lot of different ways to both receive and

accept feedback. Source: Public Domain Pictures

One of the things I loved that I read about this in the article, 6 Bad Mental Habits That Sabotage Your Success, is the way that it talked about the danger of making excuses. While this article wasn't necessarily directly related to receiving feedback as we will in this class, it still was relevant because of the nature of feedback. Speaking from experience, it is so easy to make excuses like "My reader doesn't know what they're talking about" or "they just don't appreciate what I was writing about like they should" and to throw their advice out the window without a second thought. However, not taking things personally can allow us as writers to be more open to advice in order to better ourselves in this practice.

I also am really bad about comparing myself to others around me and often questioning why I can't have the same success that they seem to. This, however, never does anything but harm. Instead of finding ways to improve my own work, I instead end up frustrated and even a little bit jealous. For this reason, The Psychology of Comparison and How to Stop provided a lot of good commentary on this exact issue. I loved the way that it said it's completely normal, we're all human. Sometimes that easy to forget. From now on, I will do my very best to "be a racehorse" and focus on myself and how I can improve, not the work of others.

Lastly, I am a perfectionist. I want to be the best at everything. Needless to say, that doesn't always work out in my favor. In fact, sometimes my very desire to succeed is what causes me to fail because I'm getting in my way. The biggest thing that I got from the article Recalibrating the Perfectionist Mind is that errors are not final, but rather they are a way to improve and to find what can be done better. This is something I can keep in mind when it comes to receiving feedback and to not be bitter about what others might have to say about my own work. After all, the feelings of others are mostly shared to allow growth, not to insult. These things are all ideas that I can keep in mind to better myself when it comes to receiving feedback and, as a result, writing.