

How to Develop a Thicker Skin - swombat
http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2008/10/20/how-to-develop-a-thicker-skin

======
kirse
As someone who used to avidly read and devour these personal development
sites/books to "better myself", it took me a few years and occasional personal
disappointment to realize that the only thing you need is to do the best you
can each day and you'll learn all these lessons on your own. You improve
because you're doing your best, and you accept yourself because you know you
did the best you could at the time (even if that was failing).

No amount of reading and thinking about becoming better will teach you these
self-development lessons, only by DOING and FAILING will you learn.

So if you're an entrepreneur that feels you have a laundry list of weaknesses
to improve upon (as I did), mentally tear it up, focus on your strengths and
just do the best you can each day. There's no problem getting some occassional
guidance to work on an identified weakness, but following these sites that
love to churn out self-improvement articles only wastes time you could be
doing and learning.

~~~
DTrejo
I think the list of weaknesses serves a purpose. It makes one pay more
attention to improvement in those areas. If one ONLY focuses on strengths,
weaknesses can be ignored, leading to less improvement.

Though it is important to keep the list short.

------
MicahWedemeyer
Praise of my site makes my day, and any random troll's "you are teh sux"
crushes me. I'm working on getting a thicker skin, but it's hard.

The advice in the article is pretty good, though, and it highlights the main
issue that negative criticism usually contains the most helpful information.

Praise keeps you going, while criticism keeps you on the right track.

~~~
unalone
The important differentiator is this: _why_ are you so reliant on the opinions
of others to keep afloat?

This was a problem I had for a long time. A part of it, I think, was that I
didn't really feel like I was contributing anything new - and, in fact, I
wasn't. Once I started pruning myself, revising things, focusing on really
creating meaningful stuff, then I found that I didn't care so much about
comments: I started to make things for the sake of those things rather than
for personal vanity.

I think that's a big part of things too. Criticism can get you on the right
track. Once you're there, if you don't leave the track criticism stops
mattering. I don't know if it's a matter of thick skin - I'm a fairly
sensitive person in many ways. It's more a matter of your realizing that some
critics are wrong, and ignoring them to continue what you do best.

------
known
Sometime back I read that MBA students in HongKong were told to go to the
nearest street corner and beg alms from the pedestrians for 1 hour. To develop
thick skin among students this seems a ingenious way to include in their
curriculum.

