If you ever stop yourself from singing because of other people’s comments, you’re in the right place.   In this video, I’m going to show you how to handle people’s criticisms when it comes to your singing. So it doesn’t affect you, or it only affects you positively.

Stick around until the end, because I have a resource that is going to help you become more confident with your voice.

My name is Jorgelina, I’ve been a vocal coach for 13 years and I teach people how to sing contemporary singing from a holistic and integral approach.

In this video, I’m going to explain the difference between facts and opinions when it comes to criticism, how to select the criticism that matters, and how to overcome negative criticism.

Let’s start with what’s the difference between facts and opinions. This is super, super important. Most of the time we hear an opinion and we take it as a fact and this is because people usually state their opinions as if they were facts.

A fact is, for example, If you have a rehearsal and the rehearsal is at 7 and you arrive at 7. 20. Then it is a fact that you are late for that rehearsal. But saying ‘you are always late’ it’s not a fact unless you have always been late 100 percent to your rehearsals.

A fact can also be, for example, that you were out of tune for a song, that you were out of key for a song, or that you were out of rhythm for a bar or two, or the whole song. Those things can be measurable. When criticism comes with facts, then those are usually the more useful ones. But if someone tells you something like your hair didn’t look good, or your singing tone wasn’t nice, or you don’t have a nice voice, or you are too quiet, or you move too much, then that is usually just an opinion.

You know that something is an opinion because not 100 percent of the population can agree on that. So, if I go to sing, and a person tells me that my hair looks good, and another person tells me that my hair looks terrible, then it is totally an opinion and usually, criticism or opinions that had to be with your voice tone or how good your voice was or if a singer was better than other… things that are not measurable and specific has to do with judgments of people’s preference then those are usually opinions and most of the time you shouldn’t be too attached to them.

Point two, selecting the criticism that matters. As I said before, usually when you can identify a fact, that is something that might be worth looking into. For example, if you are criticized because you are late most of the time, then that is something that potentially might be good for you to consider.

Criticism that has to be with things that you can measure about your voice that are not quite in sync with music, then those are also good things to look at. For example, things like being out of key or things like being out of rhythm, are usually things you can measure. Those are good things to work on.

The other thing to consider when selecting what criticism you’re going to listen to is what opinions matter.

A lot of times people opinionate just because they can, and you need to understand where those criticisms come from.

Now, selecting criticism to listen to is also very important. I think last year I was in a restaurant singing Latin American songs in New Zealand. I prepared a set of Latin American songs because I was asked to do so, so I came with my sets of songs and, a person approached me at the end and told me (with an aggressive and intimidating tone): ‘You didn’t sing any of the songs I like, I, you should sing the songs I like for the second part of the set’.

And he continued: ‘But you won’t, will you?’ That was actually quite aggressive. And I, I felt bad about it. Then I was thinking, why am I feeling bad about this comment?

Let’s analyze the situation. This person was from New Zealand. He only knew about three or four songs in Spanish and he was criticizing me because in my set I didn’t sing the four songs that he knew if you think about it, if you are logical about it. It’s impossible that I never saw the guy in my life. How would I know what songs did he know?

It’s impossible. So that criticism for example I don’t consider it important because it was ridiculous.

So I will suggest that when you select the criticism that you pay attention to.

You need to use your common sense!

I want to talk to you about how to overcome criticism to make your singing better. Of course, at the beginning, your alarm system is going to get triggered and you’re going to feel bad about it.

Most likely, but 15 seconds later, you can. bring it to your prefrontal cortex and analyze the situation a little bit differently.

It seems that we are wired to pay more attention to the one bad comment that we receive than to all the good comments that we receive. If a lot of people comment on how good your performance was and one person, comments negatively on that, you are usually, or we are, we are kind of wired to pay attention to the negative comment instead.

One of the things that we can do to overcome criticism is to train ourselves to direct our energy and our attention more towards their positive criticism. I’m not saying you don’t hear the negative comments, but there is no reason why we will have to give 100 percent attention to the negative comments, even if they don’t make any sense, some of them, and no attention to all the good things that people say about us.

So I’m just saying here that you have the power to choose how much attention you give to each comment. It’s a hard thing to develop, but it’s a skill that you can develop.

Now the second thing, of course, if you want to learn from constructive criticism, is with the tools that I already gave you, you can get all the criticisms that you received and select which ones matter and which ones don’t. So, criticisms such as, ‘you suck’ or things like that, then just delete, just don’t pay any attention to them.

But of course, there are comments that you will probably want to learn from and sometimes they include opinions, and sometimes they include facts. Once you get the opinions of people that are well-intentioned and constructive, then you can work around that you can divide them into comments that have to do with facts and comments that have to do with opinions.

You get your comments with facts such as you were out of tune in the chorus or something like that and usually you have to pay more attention to them when it has to do with facts.

Once you have your facts, you need to decide if that is something you want to work on or not. You don’t have to, but you could choose to take those facts and try to see how you make it better for next time.

If that is something that is relevant to you and that you want to work on.

Opinions, remember, are things not everybody agrees on.  they are not measurable. For example, if someone tells you that song was a little bit too energetic or you will look better in red or things like that. An opinion comes more from the person who says the opinion than from you.

It has to do more with them and with their history. So again, you have their opinions and need to choose whether that is relevant to you. Sometimes it will not be relevant and sometimes it will. And it might be something that you want to do.

When you’re looking at these opinions and how to learn from them, it’s very important that you do so from more of a logical brain.

You need to do so from a place in which you feel safe. Secure. And by the way, the more risky your performances are, the more people are going to criticize you. Probably more people will like you. So the more risky your performance is, the usually there is more polarity between the people that like you and the people that don’t.

And that’s fine. And that is part of the deal.

Every time you put yourself out there, someone is going to criticize you because that’s kind of human nature. If we develop the ability to work around it in a way that doesn’t affect us as much, then we have the power to do whatever we want. It will be really sad that you don’t go and sing and you don’t go and do the things you would love to do just because of what other people might say, yes, people will criticize. They do. That’s what they do. But if you have the power to work with that initial emotion of rejection that comes to you and let it go and work with the facts and the opinions that matter from a more analytical point of view, then you are unstoppable.

Now, I do have a resource that I would love to share with you. This is a goal-setting template that you can use, and this is going to really help you get clarity around your singing goals. Once you have clarity, you know where to go and have a much better ability to  what opinions matter because you know what aligns with your goals.