Don’t Overdo Criticism

“When your reasoning is immature, you can deny everything. When your reasoning matures, you learn to accept everything because you understand the process of life.”

—Sadhguru

Knocking something down is an easy task for anyone, says Sadhguru, but creating something is not nearly as simple.

Knocking something down is an easy task for anyone, but creating something is not nearly as simple. Those who criticize and deny may seem smarter and certainly more dramatic, but as Sadhguru explains, denying everything is a symptom of immature reason, not intelligence.

Sadhguru: When reason is immature it finds expression in the form of denying. Criticism and denial always tend to look more intelligent than acceptance and creating something. Always, the opposition sounds more intelligent because they only criticize, they are not doing anything. Those who are creating do not look intelligent because when you are creating something, you will make many mistakes – some things go right, some things go wrong. But one who just criticizes suddenly sounds so intelligent. This is how many people in the world – especially in the media – are going on unfortunately. Very few of them are really creating anything. Most of them just criticize everything. They get into this mode of trying to be one up on everyone else.

To question is fine. If you criticize someone, you must have the intention of correcting them. But to blatantly criticize and throw darts at everything is not the way forward. This has become a serious problem everywhere in the world. Criticism always sounds more intelligent. Demolishing something always seems more powerful than constructing something. If I nurture something and make it grow, there is nothing dramatic about it. But if I come and knock something down in front of ten people, that is quite dramatic. That is why knocking down is always dramatized in movies. Without knocking somebody down, there is no movie! There is something dramatic and impactful about it.

Criticism is a way of knocking someone or something down. When you take a negative stand, it somehow seems to appear more intelligent than the positive stand. That is immature reasoning because it takes a lot of intelligence to keep your own opinions aside and just create what needs to be created. When your reasoning is immature, you can deny everything. When your reasoning matures, you learn to accept everything because you understand the process of life. You are not just going by logic. You are going by the reasoning of life. You have more life sense in you, not just logical sense.

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