Stop Trying to Avoid Criticism

Posted Nov 08, 2023

Nobody wants to be criticized. It doesn’t feel good when people judge what you’ve done. We want the right people to like us; we want all people to like us. We want to be accepted, appreciated and celebrated. So we try to be like other people, like the people that everyone likes.

But in the end, does this effort pay off? No, it doesn’t. You work hard to preempt criticism, appeal to the trends, and make people like you, and then what happens? They still criticize you. Somebody finds something to find fault with you about. Think of how Marcus Aurelius was savaged by critics in his own time, just as he is today by many academics and philosophers, written off by many historians.

Imagine if he had tried instead to conform to their expectations, to fit more clearly in the box they wanted him to be. Imagine if he’d tried to win the mob’s favor or the respect of future generations by conquest or dazzling deed. Imagine if he had written Meditations for an audience instead of from a far more personal and vulnerable place.

It doesn’t matter what you do. The criticism is always going to be there. So you might as well do what you think ought to be done. You might as well do what seems meaningful, essential, fulfilling, and right to you. People are going to say what they’re going to say. Haters will find a way to hate. In the meantime, just be true to yourself and your mission, and fight for the respect (and praise) of yourself, not the mob, not the future.

That’s hard enough to win anyway.