Motivated or Paralyzed?

Very early in my work in ministry, a parent of a student in my youth group told me "and well, we both know you're not very good at that."

The parent said it jokingly, but in the way where the joke was meant to convey the real truth.

I jokingly agreed, but in the way to defuse some tension and not confront the hurt the comment caused me.

Because the thing the parent said I wasn't good at, I actually thought I was good at.

This isn't a 'woe is me' post.  Not looking for sympathy.  It is a 'what do you with that feedback' kind of post.

My initial reaction was hurt.  I was wounded.  The comments stung, my pride was attacked, and the quality of my work (and let's not kid ourselves, I wrap my ego into my work like most people) showed cracks, at least in this person's opinion.

You usually have several options when you get feedback such as this:

• Refuse to accept any of it- we usually do this when we don't trust the source of the feedback.  In this story, I could have easily done this, because I didn't have a lot of trust in this source.  Doing this, though, prevents any learning from happening.
• Become paralyzed by it- we're tempted to do this if we too have the same doubts, so we say things like "I do stink at that" or "you're right, and I am a horrible person because I stink at it".  This isn't helpful either.  You may in fact stink at it because you have a lack of experience in this area (in which case you simply need more experience) or you actually do stink at it (in which case you may need to delegate that task or surround yourself with people who excel at that).
• Become motivated by it- I was taken aback by the comment but sifted through them and found some truth there.  I knew I had the capability to be good at the area where the parent said I wasn't, but I needed to devote some energy into it.  \

Talent is good, but all of the talent in the world won't matter if you don't put some work into it.