Today, I read something on Jeff Goins' lovely blog that stood out for me. In his post, he talks about how after the release of his new book, The Art of Work, he has spent a lot of time and attention replying to the negative comments, engaging with people who "want to argue, fight, or call me names" and not enough time replying to those who have positively reviewed his book.
We all can relate to this on some level. We all pay attention to the naysayer or a single negative remark instead of focusing on the positive. That's part of human nature.
Goins talks about how this process has been for him and how he is shifting his attention away from detractors. He mentions one interaction in particular that gave him some insight into why people criticize so harshly. He says: "Not too long ago, I replied to a one-star review of my book and offered a refund to that person (as is my practice), and he sent me an email saying something that surprised me."
He said: "I had no idea authors read their reviews...If I knew you were listening, I would have been nicer."
Goins continues: "Wow. I appreciate the honesty, but isn't that indictment of society today? I would have been nicer to you, if I knew you'd hear what I was saying. This is not the kind of world that I want to be a part of." So, what is the solution? "Reward the givers, ignore the haters. Don't feed the trolls. You've heard this stuff before. So have I. So why do we ignore it? Because it's easier to argue than it is to appreciate."
It's easier to argue than it is to appreciate.
Goins continues: "Give your best stuff, including your attention, to the people who appreciate it." This does not mean that you are not open to constructive feedback. It does mean that you are not trying to convince everyone of the validity of your opinions. You are not trying to win everyone over.
There are people who simply don't connect with what we are doing. There are those that are actively discounting our work or our intentions. There are also those who, like Goins' detractor, might be expressing a casual, not-very-considered opinion. When we focus on these people, we magnify their effects on our lives.
Shifting our attention away is something we all need to learn. If you are a sensitive person, the criticism will, of course, sting for you. It might leave you reeling for some time. You might also feel like you have made a mistake and your conscientiousness can work against you in this case. You want to do things correctly, and someone is now effectively saying that you haven't.
Goins' experience also made me think of something else, how we often pay attention to the people who scream the loudest, overlooking people who don't shout out for attention. Again, we are directing our attention by default. Just like we get hooked by criticism, we get hooked by the loudest voice. In both cases, we need to become more discerning.
Who is it that we are spending our energy on? Who are we engaging with? Who are we rewarding?
Are we maybe reinforcing behaviors that we shouldn't support? If we discount the givers, the people who give to us, what are we saying to them? What are we saying to ourselves? Are we saying that the giving behavior does not deserve acknowledgement? Are we, in effect, taking the givers for granted because we have some unexamined beliefs about our own giving? Do we give without discernment, without seeing the cost involved? Do we give to the detriment of our own self?
These are all questions we need to ask. I don't think it works, giving indiscriminately. Everyone does not have the same intentions or will honor your boundaries. I don't think it works, to focus so much attention on people who are not getting what you are trying to do. We need to focus our attention on achieving a balance between giving and receiving, and pulling in the gifts of giving that are being offered to us, instead of getting hooked into negativity.
A week or so back, my sister forwarded me a link for The Receiving Project, a 32-day commitment where you set an intention every day to receive gifts of loving from the universe, and then acknowledge what you get. It seemed just like the thing I wanted to do, just like the thing I needed to do.
Even when I have things and get things, they seem to pass right out of me. I don't quite take them in. I am scared of pulling them towards me. I am scared of needing them or being touched by them. It feels like I can't quite take in the very air that is available to me, that it is there but my capacity to pull it in isn't.
I am learning about my heart. It needs to receive as much as give, that there is a delicate balance and that for it to be open, there need to be both movements - of giving as well as receiving. Without receiving, I work against the very nature of my heart, against its yearnings. I want it to be wholly self-sufficient for myself, and yet be able to give to others, and that leaves it depleted.
If it doesn't get from somewhere, where is its pool to give from? What store can it dip into? It walks hobbled. It wishes it were like it was once a long time ago, when it felt like it was connected to an infinite source, when it could give without falling over itself.
So, this project, this intention is to look at the way I relate to the world, to trust again in it. It is to take in things fully, to look at what I am already receiving. There are things that are coming to me, but that I am not integrating, am not giving thanks for. On some level, I feel that I am rejecting the gifts that I get because I am angry with God, and you don't take things from someone you are angry with.
There's that, and there are other things. I am scratching through many beliefs. Another one seems to be that receiving makes you weaker. You start needing something, and it is more self-sufficient to just not want or need a whole lot. It makes you invulnerable. But it also makes you gasp for breath. It makes you treat yourself as someone who shouldn't have any needs. That seems to be another pattern. You shouldn't want too much, some voice tells me. You should just make do.
But receiving is not making do. It's about becoming more expansive. It's about listening to the stars dancing inside you, listening to the nudges that come from deep withing and from outside, engaging in the magical reality of the world, taking up more and more space and not shrinking to fit some imaginary space you think has been marked for you or that you are allowed.
It is about drinking the water slowly, instead of gulping it down. It is okay to trust in this moment.
It's okay to give things importance. It is okay to need things.
I am just beginning to step into this space where receiving is as good as giving. In fact, it is what I need more of right now. Maybe, you are a bit like me, struggling in this space between receiving and giving, feeling like you need to or should always be on the giving side. Maybe it is time for both of us to shift, to move over to receiving, to fill in and get nourished. Maybe, giving and receiving are cycles in our own beings, and each brings something that we need.
We need this rain. We need this thing we are thirsting for. How can we allow it to soak inside of us, instead of putting up obstructions so it can't reach us? What is the cost of remaining impervious, of pretending to never need anything? There are cracks that need to go through our exterior so we can stop being so nice, and both authentically receive and authentically give.
I wonder what that would look like.
This morning, here's something by Nathaniel Branden on writing. It seems to talk about how to make something artful, so I think it goes beyond writing, into anything that we are trying to infuse with spirit, but yet want to keep empty enough so someone else can enter into it:
"If you want to obtain the strongest emotional response, then you write between the lines, never on the line; you write around the feeling, you don't spell it out explicitly. Because -- if you tell the reader everything, if you don't leave spaces for the mind to fill in, if you don't engage the consciousness by giving the reader something to do -- if, in effect, you try to do it all -- then you leave the reader passive, the consciousness is not engaged as it could be, and so the reader is not that involved emotionally."
