Every year, our organisation runs an anonymous staff survey.
It’s designed to help us grow, reflect, and improve — which is a noble goal. But if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of one of these things, you know it can also feel like standing in the middle of a firing squad while people toss both flowers and flaming arrows at you from behind a curtain.
This year, over 2,500 comments came in. As a middle manager, I got to read them all.
Some were vague. Some were brutal. But scattered among the noise were about a dozen genuinely kind words about me.
Thoughtful, affirming things. Little sentences that made me pause and think, Maybe I’m actually doing okay. Maybe I’m making a difference.
For about five minutes, I felt seen.
And then… I read a different comment.
Just one. No name. No context. No attempt to be constructive. Just a sharp, slightly venomous sentence that landed like a sucker punch to the chest. It wasn’t even the worst thing I’ve ever read about myself — not by a long shot — but, somehow, it stuck.
Apparently, I’m competent, kind, and inspiring, except to one anonymous genius who thinks I’m the devil in khakis.
And guess what? That was the one comment that took root. It played on repeat in my head all afternoon. I reread it. I imagined who wrote it. I tried to act like it didn’t matter, but then brought it up to three different people — casually, of course, just to “process.”
Meanwhile, those dozen kind comments? They evaporated. Gone. My brain couldn’t hold onto them.
I don’t know why we’re wired like this — why one harsh sentence can eclipse a paragraph of affirmation. But I do know this: the voices we listen to shape us.
And if we don’t learn how to hold feedback wisely — to receive it without being ruled by it — we’ll end up tossed around by every opinion, real or imagined.
So what do we do with it?
How do we stay open without falling apart? How do we become teachable without becoming tormented? Here are five spiritual laws that are helping me unlearn my worst feedback habits — and receive what’s worth receiving.
Law #1: The Negative Will Always Feel Louder Than the Positive
This isn’t proof that the negative is true. It’s just proof that your nervous system is doing its job. Your body is wired for survival, not serenity. And survival means scanning for threats , not compliments.
Psychologists call this negativity bias — the brain’s tendency to give more weight to negative experiences than positive ones. Why? Because for most of human history, missing a threat could get you killed. Missing a compliment? Less of an issue. Rick Hanson, Ph.D., author of ‘Hardwiring Happiness,’ says it like this:
In other words, that one cutting comment hijacking your peace isn’t a sign that you’re weak — it’s a sign that your primal wiring is still trying to protect you.
The good news? You don’t have to live there. While your nervous system might default to defense, your spirit can choose a different response.
Law #2: Some Feedback Is About You. Some Is About Them.
Not all feedback is created equal. Some is gold. Some is projection. Some is someone having a bad day and needing somewhere to put it. And unless you develop discernment, you’ll end up carrying things that were never yours to begin with.
In emotionally healthy systems, feedback is grounded in trust, specificity, and care. But anonymous comments? They’re often murkier. They may reflect legitimate concerns. Or they may reflect someone else’s pain, envy, insecurity, or unprocessed grief.
Just as writer Anaïs Nin once observed, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
And that includes the people giving feedback. The spiritual invitation is to pause and ask: Is this about me, or about them? Is this truth, or is this their story spilling onto mine?
If feedback resonates deeply, it might be revealing something important. But if it feels oddly vague, disproportionately harsh, or comes from someone not sharing the weight of what you carry, it might not be yours to hold.
Law #3: Defensiveness Is a Reflex. Curiosity Is a Practice.
The first thing that rises when we receive hard feedback? Defensiveness.
That inner spike of Nope. You justify. You explain. You compose a perfectly reasonable (but deeply petty) reply in your head.
It’s instinctual — a knee-jerk reaction to protect your ego, your effort, your sense of self. Your brain registers threat, and your body gets to work — tightening muscles, raising your heart rate, narrowing your focus. It’s the fight-or-flight response, just with less running and more email drafting.
But defensiveness, left unchecked, shuts down growth. It closes the heart. It blocks the soul from hearing anything beneath the sting. That’s why the deeper spiritual work is not to eliminate defensiveness — but to recognise it as a reflex, and choose not to act from it.
There’s a quote often attributed to Viktor Frankl (though its exact origin is debated), that captures this beautifully:
That space is everything. And curiosity is what expands it. Instead of reacting, try wondering: What might they be seeing that I’m not?
What’s this triggering in me and where does it come from? Is there truth buried under the tone?
Curiosity doesn’t mean agreement.
It just means you’ve chosen to stay open — and that is where growth begins.
Law #4: Feedback Can Form You, But It Shouldn’t Define You
There’s a difference between letting feedback shape you and letting it name you. One is formation. The other is fusion. And when we fuse our identity with what others say — good or bad — we become unsteady, living at the mercy of whatever opinions blow through the room.
Feedback is input, not identity.
It can sharpen your awareness. It can challenge your blind spots. It can help you grow in empathy and wisdom and skill. But it doesn’t get to tell you who you are. Henri Nouwen once wrote:
Now, that might not be your worldview. You may not use the word “beloved,” or believe in God at all. But the point still stands: your worth cannot hang on someone else’s opinion.
If your sense of identity rises and falls on anonymous feedback, your soul will be constantly swinging between self-congratulation and self-doubt. Neither is solid ground.
Feedback can be a refining fire, but it was never meant to be your mirror.
Law #5: The Only Way to Avoid Feedback Is to Do Nothing
If you want to avoid criticism entirely, here’s the secret: Say nothing. Do nothing. Risk nothing. Stand for nothing. Keep your head down. Colour inside the lines. Don’t stir the water or raise your hand.
But if you’re trying to build something — lead a team, write honestly, love boldly, challenge injustice, raise kids with heart — you will get feedback. Some of it will sharpen you. Some of it will try to shake you. That’s the cost of doing anything that matters.
Feedback isn’t a sign you’ve done something wrong. Often, it’s a sign you’ve done something right. So the goal isn’t to avoid it. The goal is to grow a soul strong enough to receive it — with humility, with clarity, and without losing your centre.
Even the old Zen masters understood this. When a student lost focus during meditation — started drifting or got caught in their own head — the teacher would walk past and whack them on the shoulder with a flat wooden stick. It was called the keisaku — the “rod of admonition.” And while it sounds harsh, it wasn’t meant to hurt. It was a reminder: You’ve drifted. Come back to yourself. Pay attention. In that tradition, getting “hit” wasn’t failure. It meant you were in it. You were showing up. And the strike was part of the process.
That’s feedback. Not always pleasant. Not always perfectly delivered. But part of the territory when you’re doing something that matters. If you’re never getting whacked — metaphorically, of course — you’re probably playing it too safe.
So the goal isn’t to avoid the hit. The goal is to let it wake you up without knocking you over.
The Last Word
So yes — that one comment still buzzed in my head for longer than I’d like to admit. But writing this helped me see something: the comment wasn’t the problem. The problem was how quickly I handed over the microphone in my soul to the loudest, harshest voice in the room.
That’s what feedback does. It invites us to grow — but it also exposes where we’re still tender, still tangled, still unsure of who we are. And that’s holy ground.
These five laws aren’t a formula. They’re a reminder that feedback is a spiritual practice — not because it’s always fair or helpful, but because how we receive it reveals what’s still being formed in us.
So the next time someone offers a comment — kind or cutting — pause.
Breathe.
Listen for the voice beneath it all that doesn’t flatter or accuse, but simply says: You are still becoming. Stay with it.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s the feedback that matters most.
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This post was previously published on Backyard Church.
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