These are excerpts from the author’s book “Deep,” which contains eight of his small books published in the form of Wisdom Literature covering different aspects of life: Facing troublemakers, dealing with pain, personal financial issues, gastronomy, reading, criticizing, inspiring, and feeling always good to go.

Series 6: Criticizing.

Criticizing at Home

• It is natural that home is the place where you most often practice criticism on your nature, but you should not ignore the feelings of the people closest to you when you criticize them, under the pretext of your sincere love and concern for them.

• One of the biggest challenges with criticism at home is that you will repeat yourself. This is not entirely under your control because the same daily affairs naturally are repeated at home. To meet this challenge, however, choose different approaches and the most appropriate time whenever you have to repeat a specific criticism.

• Pay attention to your moral and ethical responsibility as you release your critical judgment on the creative work of a household member. Whatever your mere artistic opinion of the work, it is a good idea to include sincere expressions of encouragement and appreciation in your words. This does not mean that you should be completely flattering and not express a disagreeing opinion if you don’t like any aspect of the work. Appreciation is important with those close to you, and your true, frank opinion will be obvious in any case, as household members will sense your tone as you speak to them and compare it with your tone in other situations when you have expressed admiration, reservation, or even rejection.

• If you see household members as talented in a field to which they don’t pay much attention, it’s good to draw their attention to that. Beware, however, of underestimating their talent in the field they love, no matter your opinion of their talent in that field. It’s difficult to predict future success in any field for anyone, so it is important to help those around you to seek their main passion but also draw their attention to other possibilities of their brilliance.

• It is natural to have an emotional reaction when you express your opinions at home, but this should not become a habit, or else your criticism will lose its value, even when it is due in the most important and serious situations.

• If you are deeply aware of the characteristics of those around you at home, you will be better able to criticize them, each according to their characters. All you need to achieve optimal criticism is to control your personal feelings when you are upset and want to criticize their actions or behaviors.

• It is important for the criticism environment to be positive at home, and it is important for you to derive benefit from every criticism directed at you from others at home, regardless of how harsh it may sound or if they underestimate what you are doing. You cannot avoid receiving criticism from those at home; they are the ones who should help you to better achieve your goals, more so than others, in general.

• Before you start criticizing at home to correct a situation, see if you can do something to correct it. Shared responsibility at home often helps the household members to take the initiative for positive action to solve a problem or to avoid another problem before it occurs, without waiting for help from others.

• Always look for what might encourage the household members, even within their simple accomplishments. Highlight their distinctive qualities, no matter how these qualities are well known to everyone, and appreciate them in front of others.

• It is important to maintain the highest level of transparency among household members about the methods used to present and accept criticism, but this will not prevent annoyance completely with regard to mutual criticism in the household. Of equal importance is that those who live under one roof should not despair of reaching the optimum level of understanding among them, especially with regard to directing or receiving criticism in various circumstances.