26. Feedback
Glennon Doyle, The Magician Tarot card, and Facebook.
What do these three things have in common?
Almost nothing. Except that they’ve all been inviting me to work on detaching from feedback as I navigate expressing myself in the world.
Glennon Doyle
When we put something out there, raise our voices, and take up space, we submit ourselves to often unsolicited feedback. In a wonderful IGTV video, Untamed author Glennon Doyle talks about managing feedback as a woman in the world. She says that when a man puts work into the world, the world asks, “Is his work worthy?”, but when a woman puts out work, the world asks, “Is she worthy of putting out work?” Let that sink in.
Though Glennon predominantly speaks to a female audience, this idea carries over to how the world responds to any marginalized person putting out work. Are they worthy of having their work seen, heard, read?
Whatever the world has to say, our innate worthiness is not up for debate.
Glennon goes on to offer an analogy: When you create, you put your work in the mailbox, and in return, you receive 100 letters of feedback. Of those 100 letters, 40 will be about your appearance, 30 about your relationships, and 20 about your personality—that’s all junk mail. Only the last 10 will actually be about your work. But 6 of those will be mean-spirited and destructive.
Now you’re down to 4 final letters. These might sting, but they will also challenge you in a thoughtful way, helping expand your perspective. In Glennon’s words:
Be wise enough to reject that 96% and be brave enough to bring into the house that 4%—let it burn, let it change you.
The Magician
Building on Glennon’s analogy, what if my only responsibility was to put my work in the mailbox?
Ever since I heard Lindsay Mack’s teaching of The Magician card, her words have struck a chord with me. Lindsay teaches that The Magician is an invitation to let whatever comes to you to come through you.
My work is to create and express what comes to me. What matters is honoring my inner call to offer something forward—a practice that requires moving beyond fear and stepping into courage.
My work is not shaped around or measured by negative or positive affirmation.
That’s challenging to internalize. For example, I may write something that doesn’t resonate with you, and it may feel like a failure. But that’s only if I’m attached to external measures of “success”. And historically, I have been.
For this reason, the idea of releasing my attachment to positive feedback is a radical concept. Negative feedback I get. Glennon’s 96 letters of junk mail? Got it. But positive feedback?
After 17 years of grades and awards, my identity unwittingly became wrapped up in positive reinforcement. I love how my friend described this effect:
Positive feedback is dopamine man. The shit gets you high and makes you feel so great—so infinite, so able to do anything. That really is the danger eh? You know what it feels like to be good at something—even for a moment, and you chase after that feeling forever.
By taking positive feedback personally, negative feedback stings that much more. With the wisdom of The Magician, it’s better off holding both lightly. Doing so is liberating. Because feedback often provides more information about the person giving it than about the person receiving it. How many people like, read, subscribe, or comment has no bearing on the work.
So if you have a negative reaction to something I write, perhaps my words needed to come out for you to discern your own truth. Or it’s a chance for me to learn what I need to learn, like with Glennon’s 4 final letters. And if you really connect with my words, my writing is no more valid or worthy because of it.
The “success” I’m choosing to be proud of is that I trusted myself to share my words with the world.
Which brings me to some self-assigned homework.
Tomorrow, on April 23, I’ll be tapping into the energies of Glennon Doyle and The Magician by sharing my birthday post on Facebook in honor of turning 23 in one week.
I haven’t posted anything on social media in years. So sharing a blog post that publicly is one way to practice detaching from feedback (or lack of feedback). Exposure therapy, right?
Expression creates opportunity for expansion. But first comes contraction.
I guarantee I’ll be moving through a lot of resistance tomorrow, because this whole “put it out there and detach from feedback” thing is easier said than done.