When we work, we hope that our work will benefit others. But the reality is that not everyone responds to our work positively with thanks and praise. Instead, we encounter criticism and rejection. The old saying, “You can’t please everyone,” is true.
We Can be Influenced By How People Respond to Our Work
How people respond to our work can strongly influence our work.
I feel good about myself and my work if I receive positive feedback. It’s motivating. The danger is that I may enjoy praise and thanks so much that I modify my practice to seek it.
Likewise, if I receive negative feedback, I feel negative about myself and my work and may change my practice to avoid criticism and try to please everyone. This can even happen if we anticipate a possible negative response.
At a time when many of the people I respect and look up to were giving unqualified praise to Chris Bailey’s book How to Calm Your Mind, I felt the need to express an alternative viewpoint. It took me weeks and weeks to write and rewrite my blog post reviewing the book because I feared I might be viewed negatively by those praising the book. I even seriously considered not publishing it after it was written.
I was amazed when I received no negative feedback but rather several comments thanking me for voicing a more critical viewpoint. My fear of negative feedback almost stopped me from publishing my alternative view, which I thought was important to be heard.
Why Do We Do Our Work?
How we allow praise or criticism to motivate us raises a most important question: Why do we do the work we do? Is our work for us or for others?
I believe that my work is to help others. It’s not primarily for my benefit. “Our work exists to change the recipient for the better. That’s at the core of the practice. When you’re doing the work for someone else, to make things better, suddenly, the work isn’t about you.” Seth Godin, The Practice.
If the goal of my work is to get thanks or public acclaim, my work is no longer generous or done to help others. It’s for making me feel important, smart, and popular.
Paying too much attention to how my work will be received subverts my whole purpose in writing. That’s not to say I shouldn’t be aware of responses. I need to know if I’m meeting the needs of my target audience and if I correctly understand them. But that’s very different from being motivated to receive their praise.
We Can’t Control the Response to Our Work
I’ve been reading a lot of Stoic Philosophy in the last year. One of Stoicism’s central tenets is distinguishing between things we can control and things we can’t control.
“Some things are in our control, while others are not.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion, 1.1
One of the things we can’t control is how people respond to our generous work. “But as we’ve said before, appreciation and recognition is not a thing we control. It’s not something that’s up to us.” You Can’t Make Them Appreciate It, Daily Stoic, Jan 9, 2024, Ryan Holiday.
Stoicism teaches that if you identify an event as something you can’t control, it does no good and only damages you to worry or fret about it or get upset when it happens. Since it’s not something you control, there’s no point in mentally and emotionally investing in it. “It is what it is.”
Ideally, we, as creators, shouldn’t worry about how people will receive our work. We design and send out our work with the motivation of helping people to change for the better.
Of course, we are concerned about whether at least some people will receive and benefit from our work. That’s the whole point of doing our work. But that’s very different from doing our work with the purpose and motivation of getting lots of public acclaim and praise.
When We Work for Praise and Popularity, We Subvert Our Purpose and Our Contribution
Seeking public approval can tempt us to gear our work to the masses and lead us to mediocre, average, unimportant work. As Seth Godin wrote, “Our desire to please the masses interferes with our need to make something that matters.” The Practice.
My purpose in writing is to make a difference in people’s lives. My motivation is to help them to change for the better. I want my work to help them learn new tools to become more productive in their work and personal lives, to be encouraged in doing their important work and creation, and to find peace, happiness, and contentment in their spirits.
My job is not to manipulate people into giving me public acclaim and praise by telling them what they want to hear. I recognize that some people will positively respond to my work, and others will reject it.
“Focusing solely on outcomes forces us to make choices that are banal, short-term, or selfish.”
Seth Godin, The Practice
I feel I have some things of value to contribute, perhaps things that will “make a dent in the universe,” as David Sparks likes to express it.
If I only seek praise, I will avoid those contributions that might be “hard to hear” and include more “easy to hear” materials. And in the process, my work will become bland, mediocre, and ineffective.
Keep Working to Help People, and Don’t Worry About the Response
We can’t control how people will respond to our work, but we can control how we respond.
In response to either praise or criticism, we can focus on doing the best work that we can, doubling down on having a generous practice for the benefit of those we work with. “Keep moving. Every piece of criticism is an opportunity for new work.” Show Your Work! , by Austin Kleon.
“The practice is its own reward.”
Seth Godin, The Practice
Our goal is to have the best practice we can, without regard to the response. “So let us strive to be worthy of appreciation but indifferent to whether we get it. Let’s keep trying. Let’s keep holding ourselves to those standards. If anyone notices, great. If not, well, that’s not why we were doing it.” You Can’t Make Them Appreciate It, Daily Stoic, Jan 9, 2024, Ryan Holiday.
We do our work and let the response take care of itself.