How to deal with criticism?

The other day on Reddit I read a post where a person was talking about their music producer friend and how they made a song together.
They apparently sent the track to someone from music industry for feedback. The post was discussing the fact that the producer got very offended after having his drum track and overall mix criticised.

This inspired me to write a short article about criticism and how to deal with it...

Criticism can be a very powerful tool when it comes to any creative process and so it's an important skill to be able to deal with it well.

I like to about criticism as a perspective.
A fresh perspective on our work. It is not absolute, we can choose to take it on board or ignore it. It's our choice.

The wise way of approaching criticism in my view is through realising that every criticism have signal and noise. In other words there is a part that can give us a valuable insightful way of seeing our work, but it also always contain the part that is not relevant to what we are trying to create.

Challenge of every artist is to distinguish the signal from the noise.

We can only make the distinction well when we think clearly.
Oftentimes criticism can feel offensive and when it does so it usually means that it touched part of our identity, something we define our self worth by.

Staying mindful of this as realising that we're taking things personally affords us a new way of facing it.
Rather than reacting with fear and closure, we can approach the criticism with curiosity and openness to learning.

We can ask questions for example:

'What made you think that the bass drum sounds weird, what about it bothers you.'

Or

'Really, you think that my voice sounds weak? Is it more to do we the volume or its timbre?'

People often don't mean the criticism to attack us.

If they do it's probably not a good idea to consider their criticism seriously anyways as there is mostly noise and very little signal.

We shall look for high quality criticism...

People that mean well and want to help us. Of course you cannot always avoid unhealthy criticism, but you'll learn how to deal with this gradually as well as you'll find that it usually comes from jealousy or hurt and you'll end up having compassion for those people.

With curiousity and mindfulness you'll be able to figure out which part of the criticism is really relevant to you and what from will you choose to take. The word choose is really important because it really is your choice. People fall into two extremes here. The ones that change themselves based on whatever anyone says about them or their work and the ones who don't change at all and stubbornly stick to their ideas even though everyone tells them to adjust or change.

Both can be toxic and the reality is that it's about learning where is the fine line between sticking to your guns and listening.

Don't try to be perfect it takes time to learn how to learn criticism.

Different people get triggered by different things. Everyone has something and it's very normal to get offensive but it's important is to be aware of it so when it comes we can slow down and realise that the criticism isn't about us and wether we're good enough and loveable, but about a unique perspective that the critic is giving us.

There's no need to take it personally.

Keep those triggers in mind also when criticising others.
When criticising we should strive to give the most signal possible and be aware of our jealous reaction or when discouraging someone only because we're are too close minded to see their vision.

Step back, listen and make a conscious choice to only say what is of value and let the rest go.