The Trap of Feeback

Feedback is the buzzword of the century! Many gurus tell you to use feedback to increase your self-awareness. Ask for feedback, they say. Reflect on what you get back. Take constructive criticism. Adjust your behaviours. I would say it's a trap.

While there might be some value in receiving feedback, there are also many pitfalls to watch out for. And that’s because feedback given to you by other people will always reflect the energy of those other people, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Let’s look at the conscious part first:

People you ask for feedback might not have your best interests at heart. They may envy you or hold a grudge and use this opportunity for revenge, or try to sabotage you because it benefits them. They will do so by trying to lower your self-esteem, your self-confidence, your power. They will do so by giving you negative feedback. Why do they need to do that? Because when you have low self-esteem, low self-confidence, and low personal power, you are easier to manipulate or control. You may stay in a job that pays less than you should earn. You may take over tasks that are not yours to do and complete them for someone else. You may put up with abusive behaviour. And the list goes on. At work, feedback is often used as a weapon or threat. Negative feedback is disguised under layers of positive

feedback, but its core purpose is to gain easy access to another person’s psyche in order to facilitate manipulation.

People might also need a justification for their actions. When you get laid off by a company, there will always be negative feedback that will go with that. Just know it for what it is. Your boss or the boss of your boss needs a reason why you are being let go. Whether it is true or not, is not the question here.

The unconscious part of the feedback you receive from people is much broader and much more fascinating.

People will always pour their own beliefs and strategies about how life should be into the feedback they give you: to an ordered person, someone who is not as ordered will be something to correct, to deal with. Hence negative feedback: you need to be more ordered. To someone who has never dared to live their full life potential, the choices of a person who dares to do so seem foolish, risky, and irresponsible. Their feedback will inevitably reflect that, since it’s given from their point of view. Others will pour all their deep sadness, transformed into envy, into the feedback or advice they give you: “don’t quit your job, it will ruin your career,” they say, but they think “I wish I was able to do what she does.”

Feedback from a low-vibration person will be useless to a person with a higher energy vibration. This is because the person whose energy is still low cannot fully comprehend the person whose energy is stronger; they have no access to that type of energy yet. Hence inevitably their feedback will try to ‘pull back’ the person with higher energy to make them fit into their limited vision of the world.

Feedback from people continuously stuck in ‘trying to help’ mode is even more dangerous. This is because most of these people are subconsciously trying to help themselves. They do so by constantly projecting their own issues and difficulties on to others around them and then trying to fix them. When you come across this, know it for what it is: a projection.

Feedback from other people rarely works because it will be full of those other people’s stuff. When asking for feedback, maintain your awareness that some of the stuff you get back will have nothing to do with you. If you forget about this, you run the risk of being too open to others’ energy and this gives your power away.

So what is the solution? To walk through life stubbornly refusing to listen to any type of feedback? Not really. There is one type of feedback that is useful, but this one does not come from other people

The real feedback in our lives will come from life itself. If whatever we do benefits our energy, if we feel more real, more alive, more in touch with ourselves as a result of what we are doing, it means we are doing well. If we feel more depleted, less authentic, more ill and we are getting worse results, we are not doing well. It’s as simple as that. The results in our life will speak for themselves. The amount of ‘struggle’ we experience will give us an indication as to where we are. A quick check on the results we are getting is enough. If they point north, trust that compass.

It is far more accurate than what other people may think of you.