Week 106: Feedback is a Gift – #AlphaFemaleFriday

Week 106: Feedback is a Gift – #AlphaFemaleFriday

 

“ WEEK 106 / 133 – 133 WEEKS TO SUCCESS “

It’s the time of year where people are putting their goals and action plans together: exercise more, follow bliss, spend less and save more. If I were to pick a New Year’s Resolution, I would say to be more open-minded.  With that open mind comes being more receptive to feedback, and knowing when to take advice versus listen to it and decide to do something completely different.

 

 

 

I was watching a documentary on NETFLIX about two conventionally successful gentlemen (i.e. made a lot of money and were able to buy a ton of stuff) who decided to completely change their lives and become more minimalist. Their names are Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, and they are speakers and authors of EVERYTHING THAT REMAINS: A MEMOIR and MINIMALISM: LIVE A MEANINGFUL LIFE. There was one line in the documentary that especially spoke to me, and I’m paraphrasing here, but it was the idea that if a person decides to become a minimalist, there’s no set guide or step-by-step action plan to do so. It’s more of a lifestyle, and there are resources out there to help you achieve that lifestyle and those resources are more like recipes.

 

 

 

In the same way you may use a cookbook to get the recipe, and you don’t necessarily follow the exact measurements or steps in the recipe, you may choose to adapt a lifestyle according to your own terms. That’s what minimalism is all about: deciding exactly what is important to you and defining success, happiness, and so forth in your own terms. As I watched the documentary and listened to their words, I thought to myself that thinking that approach could also be used in the same way advice or feedback is given to us.

 

 

 

When people give us their advice, no matter how intelligent or well-intentioned that advice is, just remember that their advice is completely biased. As I type this right now, I know that anyone who reads my blog is reading it as a viewpoint, not the end-all, be-all guide to career or business advice. I wouldn’t want it to be. It is one viewpoint in millions of viewpoints, and the more perspective we listen to and observe, the better we can shape our own. As we hear feedback from people, we can decide to say, “I agree with that!” or simply “I hear what you’re saying” and go in a completely different direction.

 

 

 

Half the time, most people give gifts or give advice because they want to: it’s the sheer joy of giving gifts or speaking our minds that makes the gift all worthwhile—not necessarily the advice or the gift itself, but the action of giving. Treat feedback like a gift, because that’s exactly what it is. In the same way that a grandmother may knit you a Christmas sweater and you think it’s the least attractive piece of attire you will ever have to own, thank that person for their gift and you can choose to kindly discard of it or keep it and wear it proudly.

 

 

 

 

Cheers,

Kelly

@AlphaFemSociety tweets by @KellyRGonzales

 

About:

Each week, I take a tip from Lois P. Frankel’s book, Nice Girls Still Don’t Get the Corner Office, and explore how each of these tips affect myself and other women in similar positions on the road to becoming the women we want to be. There are far and few between who are a few steps behind me, and many more who are far advanced. I found that Lois P. Frankel’s advice applied to novice, intermediates, and experts alike. It helped me see that I was already doing right, served as a reminder to keep on doing what I was doing and how to keep that momentum going. The book also showed me areas where I could improve, and gave realistic tips to jump on board. There are a total of 133 tips, and explore one tip per week in a program I call: 133 Weeks to Success.

Join the movement using the hashtag #133WeeksToSuccess with posts which are posted every #AlphaFemaleFriday.