My friend once said his choir mistress from his youth days told him that his voice could only glorify the devil, that it was so bad, God would cover His hears when he sings.
What?
Thatâs a terrible thing to say to a fellow human being. And Iâve heard my own fair share of horrible feedbacks.
Someone close to me once told me that I needed to stop reading too much because I was becoming too intelligent and my future husband would be intimidated.
What?????????????????
Who says things like these? Who give people right to give us their advice? Or their opinions? Or their âconstructive feedbacksâ? Whatâs going on with this world?
Let me tell you a short story. I landed a job in a digital agency in 2021. The job came at the nick of time, just when I had decided that I would work in a digital agency and gather quality experience so that by the time I started my own, I would be well equipped to drive change.
The job involved creating sales funnels for online course creators who sold both low and high ticket products. It was a really interesting one.
What I was employed to do was to write email sequences that would deliver the products or courses into the customersâ emails and to also create a lot of social media designs, ebooks, pdfs, templates and so on. It was a super interesting job.
During my interview, the founder iterated that the major reason she picked me for an interview out of the hundreds of resumes sent was because she went through my resume, loved it and decided to check me out on social media.
FEEDBACK 1 - She said she saw that I created my website from scratch and that it looked really stunning. That I was (and still is by the way) a really good writer judging from the articles on my blog. She also loved my Instagram page because it was really curated (I was following a theme at that time so , yeah).
FEEDBACK 2 - She noticed that my views on social media were more positive judging from my tweets, and that I never failed to express my sincere opinion. She also noticed that I didnât shut up about being a Christian creative.
At the end of the day, as youâd guess, I got hired and we got to work. She introduced me to a lady who I was going to report directly to, and this supervisor lady would go through my work at the end of the each day.
I kid you not, before the end of my third day working there, I started to regret taking the job.
My supervisor somehow had a problem with my designs, my style of writing and even my thought process.
She would allow me write and design from Monday to Friday and the following Monday, sheâll make corrections on everything I had written and designed. Everything. It was frustrating.
I lasted only 3 months at that job because frustration, mixed with anger wasnât a good feeling to develop at your place of work.
It wasnât that I detested her feedback or that I was an all knowing who didnât want anyone to correct her work, but the correction process didnât sit right with me. I never had the opportunity to get creative, which was why I was hired in the first place.
I had to follow the templates strictly, I had to suspend my brain and do as I was asked. I mean, I have a brain for a reason, but for some reasons, I wasnât allowed to use it.
Nah!
On the day of my appraisal, statements were made, thoughts flew around, even the statements that were not uttered were felt and that was the day I decided I was going to leave. Not because the job was terrible, no. Neither was it because the supervisor was a bad person, not at all.
But because I knew I had a golden gift that needed to be preserved. A gift that wouldnât thrive well under super structured templates and deprecative appraisals.
Alright so letâs go back to my friend the singer. Well it so happened that a new choir master came to the Church, and seeing that my friend had the potential, he groomed him and made him teach song lyrics to everyone in the choir including the choir mistress.
My friend could have easily left the choir after that defamatory remarks about his singing skills, he could have entered a cesspit of discouragement, instead, he remained in the choir and maintained team spirit and at the end of the day, he got promoted.
Sometimes, when we get feedbacks from hell fire, we allow what the feedback says to dampen our spirit. We let it get into our hearts so much that it begins to give us heartaches.
We allow outside voices that come from a place of fear, intimidation or misplaced love become our inner voices.
Maybe you have such huge dreams, but the fabric of your fancied happiness have been torn into shreds because of a myopic statement from a close family member.
Maybe your spouse, parent, or sibling gave you feedback or a piece of advice that is holding you back. Most of the time, they do it because of their own insecurities, because of their own failures and fears.
Donât let anyone hold you back, reject that feedback from hell fire. Take it that when people tell you you canât, itâs actually God telling you you can. Donât let the devil use them against you.
Remember when Peter rebuked Jesus as Jesus spoke about His death in Matthew 16:22, Jesus replied instantly saying âGet behind me satanâŠâ He recognized that the devil was using Peter against Him.
The will to do springs from the knowledge that we can do, but when we allow those who are unqualified to tell us no give us their âfeedbacksâ we allow them turn our remarkable into mediocre.
Protect your gift! Reject feedbacks from hell.