Criticism is important

Criticism is a useful tool in any relationship. A relationship is the connection, or lack of, between two people. Many people see criticism as something negative. The actual content of criticism carries a negative connotation, but the purpose of criticism is not to insult but to improve. Most people don’t like is being told they are doing something wrong or that their work is not good enough. That is why the delivery of criticism is so important. 

Irrespective  of the dynamics of the relationship, if two people work together for a unified goal then criticism is the only way to keep the relationship healthy, efficient, on task and successful. Taking criticism can be a difficult thing. But you can use criticism to give you a competitive edge. Criticism in its true sense is a feedback and is an opportunity to learn and do more to convert critics into a satisfied customer or audience member. 

Success is limited only by how much attention you can get for yourself, your products and your ideas. The right amount of attention will always attract criticism, even haters. While criticism is never enjoyed, it should be anticipated. The longevity of a project is determined by the quality of what you offer, but the success of your project is determined by how much attention you can get for it. Without the right amount of attention from your target audience, no one will know you or your product, regardless of how good it is. 

The problem with getting attention is threefold:

1. Taking enough action to get the ‘right amount’ of attention, 
2. Knowing how to handle the negative criticism that comes with attention,
3. Continue to get attention, despite the attacks, until admiration.

The goal of criticism is almost never to actually help. When criticism does not offer a solution, it is always with the goal to reduce you and your efforts. Your success in the world is only limited by the amount of attention you can receive in the world. Your ‘haters’ don’t really hate you, at best they are threatened, envious and jealous. Little thinkers and little doers criticize in an effort to keep bigger thinkers and bigger doers small.

Don't take criticism personally even if you feel you're being criticized unfairly. Don't retaliate with an extreme knee-jerk reaction that can harm your reputation as well. Even when the criticism is personal, remember that people are fallible and it's important not be offended by someone's remarks. A good professional will take criticism and even personal attacks to make them work to his advantage or, if all else fails, politely conclude the partnership and leave with their reputation intact.

Here are some reasons why criticism is good: 

1. For someone to criticize you, it means that he/she cared
2. You are reaching new people.
3. People would have ignored you, if you were unworthy to be criticized.
4. Criticism lets you see things in a different light.
5. Criticism is a form of honesty.
6. Criticism helps you to improve.
7. Criticism lets you learn about your defense mechanisms.
8. Criticism helps you to learn more about others. 
9. Criticism sometimes jolts you into action.

I learnt a lot from my critics and nothing from my admirers ... Mahatma Gandhi

A good friend will always stab you in the front ... Oscar Wilde

God save me from the friends. I can protect myself from the hackers.

People should be open to reasonable and well intended criticism and must be open to giving way to the wishes of the other. A good critic will also offer a solution to the problem that had led to criticism. Receiving excessive criticism is a sign to pause and mend your ways. Never waste your time dealing with habitual critics. If the criticism is mainly coming from one person and is in violation of your rights, put these people in their place by asserting your rights. Cut away chronic critics if you have to. But accepting criticism and using it to make you work better is too valuable of a resource to ignore. Without critics, you end up with a stagnant medium that refuses to grow and change with no self-awareness and no real progress.

Extreme wealth is indefensible

What is difficult to understand about those who make millions of dollars a year is why they ever need that kind of money for? Who could ever use that much? What are they even spending it on? Why do they actually want it?

• These people live like monarchs. They live in almost ludicrous luxurious excess.They make no effort to curb their consumption. 
• When they want something, like a piece of designer clothing or a fancy dinner, they simply buy it. An expensive meal does not require an occasion. If the family wants to go out to a pricey restaurant, they just do it.
• They don’t have to do household chores. Everything is taken care of by the housekeeper, gardener, housemaid, driver etc. It is difficult to fathom living like this.
• Yet most of their income still just gets tossed into their savings account. This is truly extraordinary. 
• Whether increased taxes on the wealthy will have useful consequences is arguable. What is unimaginable is that increased taxation would deprive these people in any serious way.
• These people donating to charities may not exceed 1% of their annual income. It’s almost as if they care far more about feeling like they are charitable than actually being charitable.
• They rarely encounter criticism for the moral aspects of this kind of life. In wealthy circles, everyone has a strong interest in allowing each other to feel like they are good people. So if one person mentions about their donating to charities, the friend is unlikely to criticize. Rarely do elites tell other elites that it is wrong to be an elite, for obvious reasons. 
• And the most contact this person has with the working class probably comes during chance encounters with the pool man, who is unlikely to voice any judgment he may secretly hold about their decadent bourgeois habits.
• Even $400,000 annually is far too much to live on. It is very difficult to even grasp the amount of money possessed by the 20 people who own more than half the country’s wealth. If it takes a lot of effort to fritter away $400,000 each year, imagine how the billionaires struggle to think of things to buy. That’s why their spending becomes outright ludicrous. Once you go past the first million, there’s not really much more pleasure you can buy, so you have to resort to nonsense.
• The tax policy implications are debatable. But it’s uncontroversial to conclude that the possession of enormous wealth, especially in a time of great suffering, is just indefensible in every way. Even $400,000 a year provides enough to live in extreme luxury. Anything over that is just obscene. 
• Risk-taking investors deserve higher returns, but actual returns do not necessarily reflect merit. The determining quality of  billionaires is to be lucky -- the other qualities being necessary but not sufficient. And luck is not meritocratic.

Inequality does not cause poverty. Capitalism has resulted in much more economic inequality in China, but much less poverty. Studies have shown that lower taxes for the wealthy don't necessarily result in increased economic growth. Extreme wealth contributing to inequality were seen as irrelevant and a prerequisite for the growth that would also help the poorest, as the wealth created trickled down to the benefit of everyone. But rather than creating jobs and lifting others out of poverty super-rich minorities cause social unrest and depress demand for goods and services, limiting growth and innovation as a result. Extreme wealth causes extreme inequality that impedes poverty alleviation, slows economic growth, compounds gender inequality, drives inequality in health and education outcomes, undermines economic mobility over generations, fuels crime, undermines social cohesion, and harms democracy.

Read the source article

That man is rich, whose pleasures are the cheapest ... Henry David Thoreau
Honesty is incompatible with amassing a large fortune ... Mahatma Gandhi 

At least 50% of the world’s billionaire wealth is non-meritocratic owing to either inheritance or a high presumption of cronyism. Another 15% is not meritocratic owing to presumption of monopoly. All of it is non-meritocratic owing to globalization. By contrast, crime and technology are found to be negligible sources of extreme wealth. The argument that "These eight billionaires, through the salaries and stock paid to their employees and the stock owned by millions of shareholders, have made millions of people rich and improved the lives of billions of people through the use of their products. They have not made anybody poor." is fine but governments must tax them at higher tax rates and spend the proceeds for accelerating eradication of poverty. These billionaires have a greater obligation for contributing for this cause. 

To be happy - Give up 15 things

Here is a list of 15 things which, if you give up on them, will make your life a lot easier and much, much happier. We hold on to so many things that cause us a great deal of pain, stress, and suffering – and instead of letting them all go, instead of allowing ourselves to be stress-free and happy – we cling on to them.

Give up on all those things that no longer serve us, and we will embrace change. 

1. Give up your need to always be right.
   Many of us can’t stand the idea of being wrong. Wanting to always be right, even at the risk of ending great relationships or causing a great deal of stress and pain, for us and for others. It’s just not worth it. Whenever you feel the who is right and who is wrong, ask yourself this question: “Would I rather be right, or would I rather be kind?” What difference will that make? Is your ego really that big?
2. Give up your need for control.
   Be willing to give up your need to always control everything that happens to you and around you – situations, events, people, etc. Whether they are loved ones, coworkers, or just strangers you meet on the street – just allow them to be. Allow everything and everyone to be just as they are and you will see how much better will that make you feel. By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond winning.
3. Give up on blame.
   Give up on your need to blame others for what you have or don’t have, for what you feel or don’t feel. Stop giving your powers away and start taking responsibility for your life.
4. Give up your self-defeating self-talk.
   People are hurting themselves with their negative, polluted and repetitive self-defeating mindset. Don’t believe everything that your mind is telling you, especially if it’s negative and self-defeating. You are better than that. The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.
5. Give up your limiting beliefs.
   Give up your limiting beliefs about what you can or cannot do, about what is possible or impossible. From now on, you are no longer going to allow your limiting beliefs to keep you stuck in the wrong place. A belief is not an idea held by the mind, it is an idea that holds the mind.
6. Give up complaining.
   Give up your constant need to complain about many things, people, situations, events that make you unhappy, sad and depressed. Nobody can make you unhappy, no situation can make you sad or miserable unless you allow it to. It’s not the situation that triggers those feelings in you, but how you choose to look at it. Never underestimate the power of positive thinking.
7. Give up the luxury of criticism.
   Give up your need to criticize things, events or people that are different than you. We are all different, yet we are all the same. We all want to be happy, we all want to love and be loved and we all want to be understood. We all want something, and something is wished by us all.
8. Give up your need to impress others.
   Stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not just to make others like you. It doesn’t work this way. The moment you stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not, the moment you take off all your masks, the moment you accept and embrace the real you, you will find people will be drawn to you, effortlessly.
9. Give up your resistance to change.
   Change is good. Change will help you move from A to B. Change will help you make improvements in your life and also the lives of those around you. Follow your bliss, embrace change – don’t resist it. Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you.
10. Give up labels.
    Stop labeling those things, people or events that you don’t understand as being weird or different and try opening your mind, little by little. Minds only work when open. The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.
11. Give up on your fears.
    Fear is just an illusion, it doesn’t exist – you created it. It’s all in your mind. Correct the inside and the outside will fall into place. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
12. Give up your excuses.
    Send them packing and you no longer need them. A lot of times we limit ourselves because of the many excuses we use. Instead of growing and working on improving ourselves and our lives, we get stuck, lying to ourselves, using all kind of excuses which are not even real.
13. Give up the past.
    It’s hard, especially when the past looks so much better than the present and the future looks so frightening, but at the present moment is all you have and all you will ever have. The past you are now longing for was ignored by you when it was present. Stop deluding yourself. Be present in everything you do and enjoy life. After all, life is a journey, not a destination. Have a clear vision for the future, prepare yourself, but always be present in the now.
14. Give up attachment.
    This is a concept that for most of us is so hard to grasp, but it’s not something impossible. You get better and better at with time and practice. The moment you detach yourself from all things, (and that doesn’t mean you give up your love for them – because love and attachment have nothing to do with one another, attachment comes from a place of fear, while real love is pure, kind, and self less, where there is love there can’t be fear, and because of that, attachment and love cannot coexist) you become so peaceful, so tolerant, so kind, and so serene. You will get to a place where you will be able to understand all things without even trying. A state beyond words.
15. Give up living your life to other people’s expectations.
    Too many people are living a life that is not theirs to live. They live their lives according to what others think is best for them, they live their lives according to what their parents think is best for them, to what their friends, their enemies and their teachers, their government and the media think are best for them. They ignore their inner voice, that inner calling. They are so busy with pleasing everybody, with living up to other people’s expectations, that they lose control over their lives. They forget what makes them happy, what they want, what they need and eventually, they forget about themselves. You have one life – this one right now – you must live it, own it, and especially don’t let other people’s opinions distract you from your path.

It does not matter what others think

It can be really hard not to worry what other people think about you. Wanting to be liked, and approved of, and smiled at, and applauded is a fairly basic need among modern humans, especially those who have their actual basic needs already met. When you're getting all of those much-wanted things, it's fabulous. Those people who you know - love and support you, it will always be with your best interests at heart. It's okay to sometimes be at odds with the people you love. The only person you need to be true to in your life is yourself. 

What you need to stop caring about is what the world-at-large thinks of you. Co-workers, party acquaintances, friends of friends, etc. It does not matter what these people think. They're perfectly entitled to their opinions, and you are perfectly entitled to not give a damn about those opinions. If someone wants to judge you, that's their problem. 

1. The best way to get something done is to do it yourself.
2. Sometimes people respond from a place of fear. Most people are uncomfortable with change, they’re not likely to be your biggest supporter. From this place of fear, they tend to nudge you back to their comfort zone. Be cautious of fear-based input.
3. It doesn't matter what other people think of you because they don't have to live with you. You are the only person you need to be concerned with when you're making decisions, not your annoying neighbors. So prioritize what you think about you and forget everyone else.
4. Others criticism of you is rarely about you at all. When someone judges you, their opinions are based on their perception of themselves and their own insecurities. You have no control over what other people decide to do.
5. You shouldn't need other people to validate you. Often, we look outward for validation that we are enough and that we're doing a good job at existing. They're also mean, self-absorbed, judgmental and pretentious, so seeking validation from other people is futile and self-defeating. If you feel good then that's all the validation you need. 
6. No one really knows your life. When people pass judgment, they do so from a very superficial, outside perspective. No one knows why you are the way you are or why you act the way you do. They don't know you. You know you.
7. You have no obligation to hold onto anything that doesn't serve you. If something doesn't serve you, let it go. Hold onto things that make you feel good. It's your choice get on with your life and all the beautiful, positive things within it that make you happy.

The best way you can serve other people is to take care of yourself first

My View:

Intelligent people learn from others experiences, mitigate risks and avoid disasters. Learning from own experiences is waste of time & resources and pull down emotionally.