Since I have been sharing client stories this week, I wanted to share one more that was so honest I wanted to hand my client a trophy and a restraining order against other people’s opinions. She said, “I know who I am… right up until somebody confidently tells me who they think I am.”
There it is.
A surprisingly large number of problems begin there. Not with actual failure or useful feedback, but with the moment somebody else throws a label at you and your brain, against all evidence, says: hmm… disturbing. Let’s obsess over that for a while.
This happens at work constantly.
Someone mistakes your standards for attitude, calm for disengagement, or boundaries for ego. Or better yet, someone who has likely never managed their own emotions decides to submit a guest review of your personality. And now you, a person with a job, a calendar, and at least one password you can’t remember, are considering whether Karen’s off-brand analysis of your character should be entered into the historical record. (HINT: It should not.)
So, how do you stay open to feedback without becoming emotionally available to every projection? Because those ARE two different things.
Useful feedback is specific. It has shape and can be worked with:
-You interrupted twice.
-The message was unclear.
-That approach missed the audience.
Projection is lazier and much more dramatic. You’re…
-Intimidating.
-Cold.
-Difficult.
-Too much.
-Not enough.
And this is where self-knowledge stops being a fluffy concept and starts earning its keep. Because if you don’t know yourself well, every opinion arrives dressed as truth.
BUT if you DO know yourself well, you can listen without surrendering. You can examine feedback and ask, is there data here? Is there something here I need to own? And if the answer is no, you can decline the invitation without a full internal collapse.
A lot of professionals, especially very conscientious ones, have been quietly trained to confuse adaptability with self-erasure.
Be polished. Be collaborative. Be self-aware. Be easy to work with. Be flexible. Be warm.
Be direct, but only in a way that leaves everyone else feeling completely unruffled, affirmed, and still in charge.
At some point, that stops being professionalism and starts becoming a hostage negotiation with other’s preferences.
You are allowed to learn…
to adjust,
to be wrong sometimes.
You are not required to let every passing judgment reshape how you see yourself. The goal is not to float through life untouched by feedback like some smug woodland philosopher. It’s to know yourself well enough to take in what’s useful, leave behind what’s distorted, and avoid handing random people the keys to your identity. In certain workplaces, that skill is less “nice to have” and more “helmet and mouthguard.”
So now I’m curious: How do you tell which feedback is worth taking seriously, and which is somebody else’s misguided projection?
