درسنامه تفسیری

Criticism – Commentary

Hi, this is AJ and welcome to the commentary for this month’s lesson. Let’s begin.

I’m going to begin by reading from a short section in the book “Grow Rich With Peace of Mind” by Napoleon Hill. Now, of course, Napoleon Hill was one of the very first peak performance writers, where he wrote about how to become rich, how to become successful, how to be happy. This is a small section from one of his books. Let’s begin.

“The fear of criticism. Your mind has limitless power to make a dream come true, provided you allow your mind to work unhampered. Few fears hamper a mind so quickly as the fear of criticism. It can stop you before you get started, and yet it is nothing but the influence of another mind or other minds, a negative influence, which often is only imagined. A person who is filled with fear of criticism often will not put forth his ideas, less he be rebuffed, and so he loses his great gifts of imagination and self reliance.”

“We may examine the careers of men who achieved mighty breakthroughs in their fields and we may marvel at the way in which they found their abilities and put them to effective use. At the same time, we may see many of the obstacles they had to overcome. Rarely, however, do we know of the adverse criticism many such men faced. Had they feared this criticism and let it take root in their minds, all their ability to conceive and achieve might have been crippled. Indeed, they never might have felt it, for their minds would not have been free minds that drive ahead.”

It’s a powerful section. I’m going to re-read it now, more slowly, and I’ll explain what some of the vocabulary means, then I’ll give a commentary. Here we go again, a little more slowly, with some explanations.

“The fear of criticism. Your mind has limitless power,” so limitless is the same as unlimited, so your mind has unlimited power, “to make a dream come true, provided,” means if, “you allow your mind to work unhampered.”

Unhampered means unblocked. To hamper something means to slow it down, to work against it, so if your mind is unhampered, it means it’s unblocked, it’s totally free to work.

“Few fears hamper a mind so quickly as the fear of criticism,” so few fears slow a mind or cause problems for a mind so quickly as the fear of criticism.

“This fear can stop you before you get started, and yet it is nothing but the influence of another mind or other minds,” so he’s saying criticism is just other people, other brains, influencing you. That’s all it is. No one’s actually hitting you. No one’s doing anything physically to you. It’s just the influence of other people’s minds.

And it’s “a negative influence, which often is only imagined”. He’s saying sometimes there is no real criticism. Sometimes we’re only imagining that it will happen.

“A person who is filled with fear of criticism often will not put forth his ideas, lest he be rebuffed.” To put forth ideas means to communicate them, right, to present them, to communicate them.

Someone who’s afraid of criticism might not communicate their ideas. They might not show or present their ideas, lest, just in case, in case of, lest he be rebuffed. To be rebuffed means to be rejected. To be rejected, rebuffed.

“And so, he loses his great gifts of imagination and self reliance.” So if you fear criticism too much, you will lose your imagination. You will lose your self reliance, your independence.

“We may examine the careers of men who achieved mighty breakthroughs,” mighty means powerful. A breakthrough is a sudden big success.

So “we may examine the careers of men who achieved mighty breakthroughs in their fields,” in their jobs, “and we may marvel at the way,” we may admire, to marvel means to admire, to appreciate, to wonder at.

“We may marvel at the way in which they found their abilities and put them to effective use.” So we can admire great men who achieve great things. We can admire how they solved problems.

“At the same time, we may see many of the obstacles,” many of the problems, “they had to overcome. Rarely, however, do we know of the adverse criticism many such men faced.”

Adverse means harmful. It means it hurts you, so many great men they got, they faced, they experienced. To face means to experience. They faced harmful, hurtful, painful criticism and many times we don’t see that. We don’t realize that successful people often have to deal with, to face a lot of hurtful, harmful criticism.

He’s saying if those successful men, “Had they feared this criticism,” if they had feared it, “and let it take root in their minds,” to take root means to begin to grow, like a plant, to begin to grow.

If they had let the criticisms grow in their minds, “all their ability to conceive and achieve,” to conceive is to imagine. To imagine and achieve. Achieve means to get success, “might have been crippled.” Crippled means injured, permanently damaged.

“Indeed, they never might have felt it, for their minds would not have been free minds that drive ahead.” That move ahead. That go forward. So he’s saying that, if they had feared the criticism, they never would have felt their imagination. They never would have driven ahead. They never would have moved forward. In other words, they never would have succeeded.

It’s a nice passage. It’s a nice section. I like it. He’s saying that all great people, he’s saying men here, but it really means human beings, so that all great human beings in fact have faced, have experienced harmful, painful criticism.

It’s just we don’t realize it, right? When we see someone who is super successful, someone who’s very successful, maybe they’re rich, maybe they’re famous, maybe they’re a great scientist, whatever, usually we don’t realize they faced a lot of criticism. A lot of people criticized them and some people were even very hurtful, very insulting.

We think of someone like Albert Einstein, for example, and usually we imagine his successes. We think of him as this great, intelligent person who came up with all these great theories in physics. What we don’t realize is that Albert Einstein faced a lot of criticism. A lot of people criticized him and even insulted him in his life.

There’s a famous story about Albert Einstein kind of failing out of school where his teachers criticized him a lot because he was different. He liked to imagine. He had a strong imagination and he didn’t like school so much, so he got criticized a lot.

This is true really of most, perhaps all, very successful people. That they had to struggle against a lot of criticism, a lot of people who insulted them, criticized them, didn’t believe in them. And then even after they became successful, people continued to criticize them. In fact, probably did it even more.

What Napoleon Hill is saying is that the fear of criticism is a tragedy, that great men, that great people will overcome that fear. They’ll move forward anyway. They won’t worry about the criticism. They won’t let it take root in their minds. They won’t let it grow in their minds.

In other words, they won’t focus on the negative, all the negative things that people say. It doesn’t matter what people say. Great, successful people will just ignore that. They won’t focus on it. They won’t think about it.

They stay focused on their purpose. They stay focused on their mission. They stay focused on their work. They stay focused on the people who believe in them. This is what great people do. This is what successful people do.

And Napoleon Hill also writes that the fear of criticism is very, very dangerous. What he’s saying here is the fear of criticism, not the criticism itself, but the fear of it, is super dangerous, because it can stop you before you get started.

A lot of people never take the chance. They never openly communicate their interesting ideas, their different ideas. They never try to do something different. They never stand out, because of this fear of being criticized. The fear of other people rejecting them.

This is a tragedy because those people, if they could overcome their fear, they could have great success. He’s saying the mind has limitless power, unlimited power, to make a dream come true, that you can make your dreams come true, but only if you overcome this fear.

And then he says that really criticism is nothing to be afraid of. There’s no reason really to fear it, because really it can’t hurt you. You’re not physically being attacked, right?

If someone criticizes you, you’re not really being hurt. It’s just their mind. It’s just their ideas. They’re just ideas. They’re just beliefs. That’s all criticism is. It’s someone else’s ideas or someone else’s feelings and emotions.

And they can only harm you if you let them harm you. They only harm you if you focus on them. They only harm you if you believe them. Otherwise, it’s just talk. It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter, right?

A true attack can hurt you. If someone hits you in the face, well that can hurt you and you can’t ignore that. If someone just criticizes you, in the end, all they’re doing is just talking, right?

He describes it as it’s just an influence or just the influence of another mind, a negative influence. So he’s saying that criticism is just another person influencing you with their mind, with their thoughts. That’s all it is. And if you realize that, then you can just ignore that influence.

He also mentions many times that this negative influence, this fear of criticism, is only imagined. It’s not even real. I’ve found this to be true myself. Just before I started Effortless English, I had a lot of fear too. I was afraid I would be criticized.

I told my family and friends that I was starting this new business, Effortless English, but I had this fear. My fear was the business would fail. I feared that no one would buy my lessons. I feared that no one would like them.

And this fear made me miserable. And then I feared that, if my business failed, my family and friends would criticize me. They would say, “Oh, see you were foolish. See, you were stupid. You shouldn’t have done it. It was a mistake.”

All this was just in my mind. It was all imagined. It was my own insecurity, my own fears, my own worries, but it wasn’t real. None of it was real. No one actually said any of that to me.

In fact, my family and friends are very supportive, very positive and if the business had failed, they would have been fine. They would have said nice things to me. They would not have criticized me.

But it doesn’t matter. I still had the fear. It was a crazy fear, but it was there. I found in my life that actually so much of the fear of criticism is imagined, so much of it is not real, would never happen and you don’t need to worry about it.

In fact, I find that it’s only when you’re successful that you actually get criticized. When you fail, not so much. It might happen a little bit. Maybe someone who’s very unfriendly, very negative, might say something bad to you when you fail, when you have a hard time. But most nice people won’t do that.

It’s when you have success that people get jealous. Nobody’s jealous of failure. They might make a little comment, but it’s no big deal. In fact, I found in my life, usually when I fail and when I’m sad and when I’m upset and things are bad, people become actually nicer for the most part.

Mostly, they’ll say, “Oh, it’s okay,” and they’ll support me. It’s when I’ve been very successful that I’ve gotten more criticism. It’s because of that jealousy, that I mentioned in the main video, that people tend to be jealous of success.

Here’s the cool thing. Here’s the good news. If people are jealous of you, that means you’re successful, so, hey, you arrived. You did it. It’s pretty easy to deal with jealousy. It’s easy to deal with criticism when you are successful, because you feel good. You feel strong when you’re successful. The criticism doesn’t bother you so much.

It’s not the actual criticism that’s a problem you can see. If you’re successful and people criticize you, why worry? You’re successful, so what? Who cares what they say?

And if you’re just starting and you’re afraid of criticism, well that’s crazy too, because you’re just imagining it. Most of it isn’t even real.

In both cases, the fear of criticism and actual criticism when you’re successful, in both cases, it’s not really a problem. It’s just an imagined problem. It’s not actually real. You’re actually creating most of it in your mind and you don’t need to.

I love this passage from the book. I recommend this book, actually. Again, it’s called, “Grow Rich With Peace of Mind” by Napoleon Hill. In a previous lesson in my VIP program, I actually taught about another section and I might choose an even different section for a future VIP lesson, just because there are a lot of good things in this book.

I recommend, go get the book, maybe even read the whole thing. More importantly in your life, think about this deeply: When you are thinking about doing something different, when you’re thinking about taking a chance, trying something new and that fear comes up, realize that you’re imagining it. Realize that no one is actually criticizing you.

And the second case, when someone does criticize you, push it aside. Don’t let it take root in your mind. Don’t let it grow in your mind. Focus on your mission. Focus on your goal. Focus on the people who support you.

And you will eventually be successful. I promise you. You will. Have faith in yourself. Trust yourself. Believe in yourself and you will, eventually, succeed.

Good luck to you. I will see you next time. Bye for now.