The Crucial Role Critical People Play in Your Life (Read time: 3 min.)

Have any critical people in your life?

 There are those people in your life who, no matter what you do or say, find fault with what you've done or said.  Far too often, those people are closer to us than we'd like.  Whether it's a parent, sibling, spouse, partner, or co-worker, when an outer critic is prevalent in your life, you feel it in your spirit. 

And the question is:

What do you do about it?

Here's the thing: those critical people are crucial components of your life's spiritual agenda. They are some of your greatest teachers.  Although there might be pain with their presence, there's also one important thing you're gaining with every experience: power. 

Learning that your opinion of you is more important than another person's opinion of you is one of the most important lessons that come with having a critic in your life.  Those people weren't put in your life to approve of you... and you weren't put in their lives to fight for and gain their approval.  No, the goal of this holy encounter is one thing and one thing only:

To learn that you don't need anybody else's approval

to be who you are. 

In fact, the reason that person doesn't approve of you (and probably will never approve of you) is because they weren't sent here to be your pep coach.  They were placed in your path to teach you that you don't need one.

At the end of the day, when and how you set clear boundaries with critical people is up to you.  But, in doing so, don't think that shutting people out is the answer to the question of life being asked.  When you're presented with close friends or family who constantly criticize you, it's time to stop, step back and ask yourself two questions:

1) Whose approval do I really need?
2) How can I learn to only need the approval I give to myself?

Those are the two powerful questions that help you see critical people in a new way.  When you do, you also realize that you don't have to denounce, disown or destroy someone who criticizes you.  All you have to do is denounce, disown and destroy the power you've given them to determine how much you're allowed to grow.  In that moment, you become so large and so powerful that what they say falls on deaf ears.

Why?

Because you've learned the lesson they've come to teach you:

No one else's opinion of you is as crucial as the opinions you have about yourself... and only you control that.