For years, I experienced feedback like being put through a shredder, emotionally torn apart, and left trying to piece myself back together. If you’re a different thinker, leader, or entrepreneur with ADHD, dyslexia, or autism, you might know that feeling too.
In this video, I share my personal journey of transforming my relationship with feedback, from deep fear and rejection to viewing it as one of the most powerful tools for growth. I talk about the trainings, mindset shifts, and real-world lessons that helped me stop taking feedback personally and start using it to become a better leader, coach, and human.
If feedback has ever felt painful, overwhelming, or confusing, this story will remind you that you can change your relationship with it, and that doing so can completely transform your leadership and your life.
👩🏫 I’m JoyGenea, International Neurodiversity Coach and Unconventional Leadership Coach. I help creative, different-thinking leaders learn to thrive, communicate clearly, and grow with confidence.
🔗 Learn more in a free consultation: https://joygenea.com/schedule-free/
Transcription:
So here’s a little secret about me, something I’d love to not share, but I think it’s important to share. One of the greatest things I feared for many years was feedback.
I experienced feedback as being put through a shredder, a cross-cutting shredder, and having all of my feelings and emotions shredded up. It felt like immense rejection and immense… it just felt horrible. Sometimes it could tear me up emotionally in a manner where I was not my best for quite a while afterward, while I tried to piece those pieces back together.
This is not massively uncommon for different thinkers and people that have ADHD, autism, dyslexia—it can be that way. So a few years ago, I got really tired of that being my experience, and I recognized how detrimental it was to my business and to me as a leader. It was wasting so much time and energy and so forth.
So I said—I set out, I wrote it down on one of my annual things where I write down my goals—and I noted on there that I was going to work on receiving feedback. That was going to become a really big thing.
So in 2021, I invested heavily in training, in experiences—really big, international types of trainings—that got me really, really uncomfortable and got me out of my comfort zone when it came to feedback. It allowed me the freedom of changing that whole paradigm and to stop experiencing feedback as being put through a cross-cutting shredder and shredded into pieces.
Instead, I learned to hear it as what it typically was: the opportunity for growth, somebody else’s insight and perspective, potentially into a complete blind spot for me that I was totally missing. It was a gift, most of the time.
And being able to discern when it wasn’t a gift—when it was strictly bullying or said to be abusive or unkind—that allows me the opportunity to say, “You know what, that feedback, thank you so much. I may not apply that.” But I get to choose now because I understand, and I do not experience feedback as anything more than an opportunity for growth, either in being resilient or in being able to differentiate and discern what’s valuable feedback or something that could possibly massively improve my life, my business, my client experiences.
It’s incredible.
So as a leader, if you’re struggling with feedback in any way, I get it. You’re not alone. And you can totally shift this.
If you’d like to grow your ability to appreciate, gain feedback, use feedback, give really good feedback—that is one of the things I can definitely help you with in my coaching.
I’m JoyGenea, International Neurodiversity Coach, Unconventional Leadership Coach, and newly minted, much better feedback receiver.
Thank you. Now bye.