07/13/2024
Person: sees a need in the world and tries to put the work in to make it better.
The peanut gallery:
You shouldn’t be doing that work because I am.
You should ask permission first.
You didn’t fix all of it so you should just stop.
I have a better idea than you.
You don’t know what you’re doing so stop.
Your work didn’t address *my* specific concerns.
I don’t like you.
I don’t like your work.
I want you to do your work my way.
… what did I miss? 😆
I do wonder about this effect for women leaders where we are more likely to wait for social support before acting. How many heartfelt missions were never started because of this ridiculous noise?
Your work IS YOURS. The critic I think is confused. They feel a longing to improve the world and turn it into an indictment against you instead of allowing it to inform where their place exists. That’s between them and their conscience. If you are working towards the heart project, please know that I and others are clapping for you. 
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
- Roosevelt 2010