And hello to you and welcome to the Richard Nichols podcast, the Personal Development

podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate and motivate you to be the best you

can be. I'm psychotherapist Richard Nichols and today you'll learn all about accepting criticism. And if you're

ready, we'll start the show. Good morning. I say morning. It might not be morning for you. If so,

good afternoon.

Evening all, have a nice night and everything in between.

How have you been lately?

Hope the world isn't getting on at you too much.

The thing about being human is that it's almost impossible to hide away from the world. I mean, you can kind of try, but as

so many of us found out back in 2020, it's not good for us. Avoiding social activities might

keep the critical people and the possibility of rejection at arm's length, but it also trains the

brain that the outside world is dangerous

and encourages social anxiety. So if there's a choice, we don't want that. We want to be able to

handle the critics and the possibility of rejection. I mention this because a lot of people

ask me about how to handle criticism, how to get a thicker skin, because there

are so many ways that we can be the target of someone's criticism. And if you're someone who feels

rejection really deeply, please know, that doesn't mean you're weak. It means you're human. Just existing is enough to invite

judgment from some people, let alone the insults we might get from someone who didn't just get

out of the bed the wrong side, but got out of the womb the wrong side, or the barrier that the

internet can have on us so that it feels safer

to be rude in a comment on social media than it would face to face. It's a funny world we're

living, but I think the first thing we need to bear in mind is that context is important.

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