I have posted this before but I would appreciate another look at my mechanics just to make sure everything is perfect.

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. (Roosevelt 4)

Like Roosevelt, I believe in becoming the man in the arena: The individual who takes everything the world can throw at them and still gets up for more; that kind of person who rises up to every challenge and faces it until the end, win or lose. It is easy for others to criticize us, to tell us we have no chance at achieving our goals. It doesn’t matter whether the critic is right or not, what matters is how the person on the receiving end deals with the criticism. Do they let it depress them, give up at their endeavors and go on being the same? Or do they consider the merit of the criticism and jump back into the arena to go for another round? That’s the difference between success and failure.

About seven years ago I was diagnosed with manic depression. At that that time I didn’t deal with criticism very well; in fact, it was the main cause of my problems. One day I was categorized as a high-risk for suicide. I was admitted to a hospital facility that specialized in dealing with such patients. It was in meeting these other patients that I realized I didn’t have a serious disability. My issues came from interacting directly with other people--mainly from criticisms they gave me. I didn’t understand the concept of The Man in the Arena until that point. I let everything get to me. I knew I had to change that. So I listened to the criticism and advice that I received from counselors and doctors and, rather than dwell on the negative input, evaluated it to see if it was applicable to me. If it was I applied it. As a result, I changed and a few days later I was released from the hospital. It took time to adjust to this new way of thinking, but it worked. I did this by fighting through my problems and through the criticisms of others. Going into that situation the outlook for my diagnosis was very bleak, but I ignored the predictions of everyone else and focused on what I knew was true.

The time that I spent in the hospital taught me that my situation was not as grim as I believed it to be. This period of my life helped me believe that I could be a better person than I was. It was a life-changing experience because it forced me to apply myself and improve my life. I did not realize how self-destructive I was prior to this event. Since this time I have made a complete recovery, which was far better than anyone myself included could have predicted.

Following that event, I have realized that the world is driven by people in the arena. Albert Einstein, now considered to be one of the greatest physicists of all time, was once considered to be unintelligent, even autistic in some cases. He had difficulty getting into schools of higher education. When he finally did and graduated, he was unable to get a job. He was forced to take a job that he got through a family connection as a patent office clerk. Einstein tried to get a job teaching but could not; in fact some schools that he applied to actually wrote back telling him he was crazy and should give up. His methods of solving problems were considered unscientific; because they did not follow strictly follow the established methods of the time.
Einstein never gave up, though, and finally his ideas were recognized for their brilliance. He a world-renowned physicist he had schools lining up to hire him, and in 1922 he was awarded a Nobel Prize. Einstein persevered despite everyone else’s beliefs; had he not done that, the world would be a different place. Imagine if Albert Einstein had not signed the letter detailing the Nazi’s attempts to construct nuclear weapons

The experience I had during my depression showed me that criticism can be both good and bad. I’m not suggesting that every time a person is criticized they undertake a campaign to prove the critic completely wrong in every way. What I am saying is that, if an individual really believes in something, they should strive to make that belief a reality. There are some fights that cannot be won; for those cases, I say battle through the problem and go on with life, with the knowledge that, even though the battle was lost, it was not a failure and a valuable lesson was learned. The only way a person can truly fail is to let a critic’s word stop them from achieving a goal. So I challenge everyone to stop and think about the next criticism they receive: to ask themselves if it's valuable and, if it is, to use it-- and to move on if it isn't.