How to make friends and influence people #2

The book I am reading "How to Make Friends and Influence People" has pleasantly surprised me by being actually useful in my senior project. I have been working very hard to get approval for the citizenship clinic, have applied for a grant, made fliers and other posters to distribute, made announcements to congregations, and other things. It has so far been a lot of work but I have enjoyed it. Even with a lot of time consuming pieces of the project, the hardest part has been maintaining strong relationships with some people who have very strong personalities. Hermana Juanita, Pastor Quiles wife, is a very loving but extremely strict and analytical person. She  is gentle and kind, but very particular about what she wants. She wanted me to present to her my project again once I had a three ring binder, wanted my flier to have a header, wanted the name of the congregation (Islesia Cristiana Jesucristo Vive) not the church (International Community Church) on the flier, and the flier should be a full page, not to speak for more than four minutes to the congregation etc. She had strong criticisms and clear requests. I remembered back to the  second chapter of the book, where it said that criticism is useless and gets in the way of progress. I agreed with this statement upon reading it. Criticism makes people feel less confident, and thus can lessen their ability. I certainly know this from my work with the pie business where Sophia and I can be quick to criticize each other at times, and we are trying to remain more positive in the project to improve the business as a whole. Now, after being strongly criticized (yet also strongly supported and cared for) I feel a bit differently. I knew that according to this book, the criticism should have gotten in the way of my success, but simply because I knew that I decided in myself that I would have to prove it wrong. Instead of feeling discouraged I used the criticism to help me grow and as an opportunity for Hermana Juanita to get to know me and in part educate me on how this were going to happen in her church. It was thanks to the theory I read about that I was able to be conscious and not let the criticism effect me, so I'm really glad I chose this book and read it because it has already proven helpful and this is just the second blog post!

In light of the fact that I was obviously too excited about my project, and said almost nothing about my reading, I will do a little elaboration. Criticism is hard to take, and at times I think its necessary because kind and constructive criticism helps us improve our work, especially when that criticism comes from people who care about us and our successes enough to say things with empathy and positivity. I definitely understand the idea that strong criticism from people who ae just upset with our performance isn't generally very effective, and doesn't leave much room for the person to improve. I do think though that people are oftentimes overcritism. not because they want someone to improve, but because they are frustrated with someones poor performance and criticize not for the betterment of others, but because they aren't handling their emotions well. This typeof criticism is unkind and counter productive but we somehow all do and should really be careful to avoid it. Instead we can support the positive development of those we care about to improve.