Feedback should be a normalized, every day part of life. It should be welcomed with open arms and ushered out of our already clustered minds. The more it’s kept in the capsule of your mind the more it has the power to eat away at the person internalizing it or hurt the person that could receive and grow from it.
Feedback does not feel organic or right at times, it feels like this monster we continue to keep shoving in the closet with all of our might in order to keep the peace. In reality it the largest elephant I have ever seen in the room, staring at all of us waiting to be acknowledged.
Feedback is good, healthy, and when its done in love can really change the dynamic, experience, and mood of the moment at hand. But it can also bring about awkwardness, bitterness, and grudges so piece through where it’s okay to react and where your emotions really ARE getting in the way.
Feedback is not just for World Racers because we all need to experience our own selves through a different set of eyes sometimes. Feedback is for the church, for the workplace, for your inner circle, and especially for your family. If we are allowed to examine other’s lives, then we give that same opportunity to others to pour into us too. Don’t disregard this blog just because you’ll never do the World Race like me, you can practically take away from this and learn to speak depth into people to call them higher into God’s personality traits.
Feedback looks like this, it looks like six people sitting on the floor in a muggy room in India crying telling each other what’s going on in their heads, or at breakfast in Vietnam over eggs and bread reading off some “constructive criticism” we have prayed about in order to give to the person to our left. It’s also that hard conversation that you don’t want to have to acknowledge something that is bothering you. It’s staggering back from the group with another girl in order to mention to her that you’ve seen that certain thing in her that you want to call her out of. It’s everything we don’t want it to be, but it’s altogether healthy. It hurts and it helps.
Feedback was never a natural thing for me on the Race until I decided I would make it one. When someone who is your teammate, workout buddy, best friend, fellow Christian, co-worker, and simply a normal human decides to open up their own heart and share what they see in and about you, it doesn’t always strike a loving chord depending on the topic. These people that I have surrounded myself with these next 8 months act as everything to me, every role in my life they fill. And that’s the hardest part too, you cannot just disregard this person by hiding out at your own home, or your own job, or your own car, or your own favorite coffee shop. Let’s be honest, you don’t get to “own” anything on the Race, everything is shared.
Feedback is something you face head on with a “thank you” when in reality maybe you are about to cry because it makes you insecure to hear that. We forget how bold that person had to be to actually open their mouth in the first place to speak that courageous fact or false word. Either way there’s redemption knowing that they don’t have the voice of God-they can speak His words, but what other’s say isn’t the end all be all.
Feedback for me comes with a grain of salt back in my face. Unintentionally but almost as a cry for help I give the words I wish to receive the most myself to someone else in a manner that is not always with honor and love.
Feedback is just as much for the person that is giving it, as it is for the person who is receiving it. Out of our need to feel power and authority we call out what we wish others would see in us, in others, the good, bad, and the ugly. Psychologically we convince ourselves that it is okay to be harsh with others in love when maybe that’s the Lord refining our own characters.
Feedback makes you a better person, so just do it.
