Handling Criticism. (Monday Moments #60)

          She had been a designer at the firm for about 6 months. Everyone at her office was pleased with her work. She put lots of efforts doing her job. While pursuing her Ph. D. in literature, she worked extra hours just for her passion. 'Do what you love and love what you do.' She firmly believed in that. This was why she continued on her two hobbies; design and literature, into her career. Her boss called her for a meeting that day. They had a new client with a completely different line of business. She had researched about such businesses and come up with a design. But, in that meeting, her boss told her what the client felt about it. His words were something like this. "He hated the design and wants you to re-work it. He said that he expected a much higher level of quality and was disappointed with this. He has given you more time to make something which will match his goodwill in the industry." And at the end were some words of encouragement. As she left that meeting, she had to stabilize herself because that was the first ever criticism she had received. She knew this moment would come some time in her career. She thought she would be ready but when it happened, it shattered her. With a sad existential crises, she went to her literature class. Fortunately, the book they had to read was reviewed. It was a classic and everyone was stressing on its critics. And then she spoke, "The author had two choices. He could've taken the critics seriously and quit writing. Or he could've studied them and used it as an improvement. We're lucky he used option 2 because that's how we could read his other bestsellers." And just like that, literature helped her problem with art. One hobby came to the rescue of the other. She knew exactly what she had to do. She knew she wasn't going to sit and cry about it but instead take that criticism constructively to make something extraordinary. She chose option 2 as well and she too became a bestseller.

(‘Monday Moments’ is a blog series wherein I write about an incident or a moment in a short paragraph. It’s not a story, but just a short description to express and explore the most common joys and also the uncommon miseries.)