My Experiences In Constructive Criticism, Feedback and Figuring Out How To Take It
I want to go off the beaten path for this entry and talk about my personal experience with feedback and constructive criticism. Growing up as the oldest child my dad always had high expectations for me and I struggled with that. I felt that everything I did always had something wrong with it and even when I did what I was asked, it was never enough to satisfy. Looking back on it today, I couldn't be happier that he raised me the way he did. He has always pushed me to be the best version of myself, even when it felt like I could just never do enough to satisfy. It wasn't that I wasn't doing enough, it was that he wanted to push me to see my full potential and if I would ever give up on anything. Those are the type of things that you don't realize as a kid but grow to appreciate as you get older.
I felt a lot of the same pressure from him in hockey. I started playing goalie a bit later than most do. I struggled a lot with self confidence and always feeling like I wasn't good enough and could never be good enough. I never wanted to quit, but I wanted to be better than I was without putting the effort in. As I grew a older I finally realized that if I wanted to get somewhere in hockey - and in life - that I would have to put in more effort than the guy I was competing with. That goes for on the ice, off the ice and away from the rink. Everything I did would was to be better than the next guy and I would never find success until I did so. I struggled with this at first, but once I had my eye on the prize of playing college hockey and trying to find out how far I could go to prove to my father and myself, I knew that I could do anything. Once I stopped taking my dad's feedback as criticism and started learning from it and taking it as a positive from someone seeing what I'm doing from the third person view, I started to see success.
I didn't always get along with my dad when I was younger because of the feeling of constant stress and pressure, but looking back on everything I couldn't be more thankful for his constant feedback on everything I have done in life, hockey or in general as a person. I will forever be thankful of his feedback and I hope to pass on what he gave me to my kids and grand kids in the future.
I really enjoyed reading this Connor, you definitely took a different approach from myself. I went through a quite similar struggle myself, my sister (class valedictorian), had always done excellent in school and my parents expected the same from myself. I was also a lacrosse goalie up until college and I felt a lot of the same pressures, it's definitely a position that requires a lot of perseverance. I think a lot of good characteristics can be built around sports and teamwork because you're also constantly getting feedback from your team and coaches too. Are you playing hockey here at wentworth?
ReplyDeleteThat was really enjoying to read. It seems like you went a different route with this topic than I did. I do however understand where you are coming from as I am the only one out of my siblings with my mom's last name so as I grew older things felt different than they did when I was a kid. My mom always told me that I was her kid and I felt like I needed to prove to her and myself that I can be successful. I started going downhill in high school not academically but mentally/emotionally. It is cool to see that people can see the brighter aspect of their past and improve on it.
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