The best advice I was ever given
The words that have helped me bounce back from criticism and accept compliments gracefully.
When you’re starting a business, you’re trying to traverse rocky terrain using a map that contains no place names, directions nor landmarks. It’s confusing and terrifying and electrifying – usually all at once – so I was willing to take advice from anyone willing to proffer it (and even those who weren’t). I spent the first 12 months of One Grounded Angel contacting prominent people doing similar work to me, asking for tips and suggesting collaborations. I didn’t get much in the way of responses, and in hindsight, that was for the best.
The thing is, not all advice is helpful, and when you’re starting something new, it’s hard to decide what is and what isn’t going to make a difference.
The best piece of advice anyone ever gave me didn’t come from any of the humans I tapped for guidance, it was a throwaway comment made on a podcast interview, the title of which I’ve long since forgotten. That advice was huge not for not only the work I do as a writer and spiritual healer, but for my life overall. Those words were:
Learn to separate yourself from what you do.
What that means is: what you’re doing is important and meaningful, but it doesn’t shape your identity. Your value doesn’t rise and fall based on what you create or build. And crucially: your value doesn’t rise and fall based on what people think about what you create or build.
That helped me to accept that if someone shares negative feedback on something I’ve posted on social media, it doesn’t mean they don’t like me, or that I’m unlikeable. It just means they don’t like what I’ve posted, and that’s okay.
Equally, if someone sends glowing feedback after a healing session, that doesn’t mean they love me, or that I’m super loveable. It just means they love what I’ve done, and that is also okay (although obviously this is the type of feedback I much prefer!).
We are not what we do. Understanding this at an early stage of my spiritual business was quietly revolutionary for me. It has allowed me to follow my intuition on what I create without my ego getting in the way. Including this very Substack.
Does that mean I don’t still get nervous when I’m sharing something personal? Nope. Does it mean I don’t still feel yuck when I get criticism? No again. Because I do care, very much, about what I do – it’d be weird if I didn’t. But I’m better able to put a ‘stop-loss’ on that emotional response, which means limiting how much I let it affect me.
I am not what I do. I am so much more than that. Sometimes I forget this, but when I do fall back on this wisdom, it has made a big difference to my ability to show up and be authentic in my writing and in my healing work. It helps me care deeply about what I do without it being the be-all-and-end-all. The stakes are always high in a profession like mine but I will not be completely derailed if my work isn’t received in the way I’d have liked. It’s probably the only advice I’ve held onto throughout this journey, and no matter what’s ahead, I hope I can keep coming back to it.