Feedback Thoughts

 For this assignment, I read Rewire your self-critical brain and How to Get Past Negativity Bias. The first article focused on viewing your small setbacks as opportunities to spring forward, taming your inner self-critic, and the second article focused on getting past negativity bias to hardwire positive experiences.

As an engineering major, I experience feedback quite often, whether it's to tell me that I'm doing a great job or the code that I submitted is inefficient and could be optimized. Of course, I much rather prefer the positive feedback, but the negative feedback is entirely necessary. 

I've noticed that I often run from negative feedback by pouring a lot of time in energy into the activities I choose to participate in so I can perform well enough to avoid the negative feedback altogether, but it is not nonexistent. In fact, if I beat myself up every time I got negative feedback, I would probably be very bruised. I like the idea of using these experiences as a new starting point to start being nicer to myself and celebrating the small victories. 

I've also had some experiences working in teams, so one way I can filter out the bias that comes with negative feedback is to start associated all feedback with collaboration, positive or negative. This way I can view feedback as an opportunity to collaborate and learn, applauding myself for learning something new or challenging myself rather than beating myself up for the negative feedback. In this way I can train my brain to appreciate the negative feedback, seeing it as a door opening that was once closed before. 

(Feedback Kaleidoscope by krazydad / jbum)