Criticisms as they are

We may receive lots of criticisms, no matter if we are starting a new business, switching to a new career, developing a new product, proposing a new theory, or making an important choice in our life.

The most helpful ones are from a higher level of knowledge, or from a synthesized range of perspectives. They bring more comprehensive understanding of the things we are trying, or help us look at things from a higher dimension and beware our position within a bigger picture. Without those criticisms we may fail absurdly, with a cost we should have avoided.

The less helpful ones are from irrelevant angles of perspective. The critics hold totally different standards and values, and may be full of prejudice. However, they sometimes turn out not that irrelevant as we thought, and bring complementary information that we did not realize we need beforehand.

The useless ones are out of narrower mindsets and poverty of knowledge. Usually they are easy to identify because we know that we know better than those. However some of them are so nicely packed and beautifully presented, that we may think they are still insightful. If they are still encouraging to us, just take it as flattering and relax. If they are really discouraging, ignore them as much as we can.

The harmful ones are made to be detrimental to you. They look either really aspiring or extremely embarrassing, with a good mix of truth and myth that you don't know very well, appearing to be informative, but in fact misleading to you and your collaborators. Once you respond or defy against them, you are directed to the wrong directions. Be prepared to identify them during early stage, and try everything to get rid of any impact imposed on you.

However it is common that we find it tricky to distinguish between the good and bad criticisms. There is no need to panic. We just need to learn our lessons, to do our research, upgrade our knowledge, skills and visions, to be better equipped to cope with criticisms. Life-long learning is still the best solution, not only for this aim but also for many other challenges in our life.