Here are some rules of thumb. It’s generally a good idea to seek criticism from others when:

1. You care about having an accurate understanding of how others perceive you. It is easy to go for decades without realizing that your posture makes you seem like you lack confidence, or that people find the speed at which you talk hard to follow. Those that know you well and new acquaintances can provide different sorts of information in this area. Friends have a hard time remembering what it was like to see you for the first time (so can’t comment as usefully on surface level information), whereas acquaintances will be unaware of how you act when you’re not around new people.
2. You have an important weakness that it pains you to think about. When ideas are painful to consider, we often don’t think about them as deeply as we should. That means we can easily end up with only a shallow understanding of the weaknesses we most dislike about ourselves. Others who are affected by our weaknesses can help us understand them better if we ask. But when receiving this sort of criticism we run a serious risk of feeling angry and defensive at what we hear, so we have to be sure we are ready to receive this criticism before we ask for it.
3. When you are trying to enhance your relationship with a particular person. Even if someone likes you a great deal, there are probably at least a few things you do that he or she would rather you didn’t, or a few things you don’t do that he or she would rather you do. Asking for honest feedback on how you could be a better friend, or which behaviors the person would prefer you stop, and then making those adjustments can be a great way to make that person (even) happier with the relationship.
4. When you want to accurately understand the extent of your skill, and you’re talking to someone much more skilled than yourself. Sometimes, it’s valuable to know exactly where we stand in terms of skill. Seeking criticism from someone more expert than yourself can help settle questions such as whether you really have what it takes to play professional soccer, or whether a physics PhD is really for you. That’s not to say that you can’t occasionally exceed the expectations even of experts. But knowing where an expert thinks you stand can give you a more realistic sense of your capacity.

There are of course other situations besides those lists above when seeking criticism is valuable, but the above list highlights some times when it can be especially useful to do so. So seek criticism in order to better understand how others perceive you, to know your weaknesses, to enhance your relationships, and to assess your true level of skill.

In an environment with little criticism, it’s easy to forget about your flaws. But the more aware of them you are, the better position you will be in to correct them. So when you get really serious about self-improvement, being in a position to regularly receive criticism becomes a hugely valuable resource.

Other people see things about us that we ourselves can’t see. In part, this is because they tend to be less biased, but also because they watch us act from a third party perspective, which leads to different observations than occur from inside our own minds. For instance, others are more likely to notice if we do inconsiderate things, or if we have a goofy looking smile, than we are ourselves.

When I started to actively seek criticism from those who knew me well, I made many discoveries. It was incredible to me that I’d been so oblivious for such a long time about some of my undesirable behaviors, and that no one had ever mentioned them before. It became clear that most people (even those who care a lot) wouldn’t risk upsetting you or annoying you, even to tell you something that you really should hear. Fortunately, in many cases, merely becoming aware of a flaw was enough to get me to correct it.

To get honest feedback you shouldn’t ask “How would you say I’m flawed?” That may just be perceived as fishing for complements. What worked for me is making it clear that I’d gotten serious about improving myself, but that I needed help discovering more ways that I could improve further. When people realized that I truly did want to know my flaws, and that I wouldn’t get angry or defensive at what they said, the process went smoothly. Of course, it helps a lot if you really aren’t going to get angry or defensive. If you’re not at that point, hearing criticism from a friend could damage your relationship. Also, you should choose your sources of criticism wisely. Pick someone who is likely to give thoughtful comments, rather than use the opportunity as an excuse to attack you.

When you learn about a flaw for the first time, you’re probably going to wince. It hurts when you realize you’ve been doing something wrong for so long, and that people may have been judging you for it. This is one of the big reasons that so few people actually seek criticism. But if you set the goal of being a great person rather than just thinking you are great person, then criticism is less difficult to hear. It may also help to think about what an advantage it is to be the sort of person who finds flaws and then demolishes them, rather than taking the standard course of pretending they aren’t there. Flaws become opportunities the moment you learn about them, and you can improve at almost anything once you’ve figured out your weak points.

When you do receive criticism, it takes some skill to get the most out of it without feeling too bad. It’s useful to learn to dissect it into its basic types. There are three types of criticism, which often come mixed together:

1. Accurate criticism. This is a criticism that is warranted, and relates to one or more of your flaws.
2. Ignorant criticism. This is criticism based on a confusion or misunderstanding, and it does not actually relate to your flaws.
3. Emotive criticism. This is criticism designed to express emotion or evoke emotion in the person hearing it.

To see how dissecting criticism works in practice, let’s consider a hypothetical example. Suppose that the last three times your friend called you forgot to call him back. You kept intending to do so, but then it would slip your mind. One day, you bumped into this friend on the street. He came up to you and said:

“I just have to tell you, you’ve been an asshole lately. You’re so busy with your new girlfriend that you don’t even call me back anymore. You’re going to lose friends if you keep treating people like this.”

Ouch! Let’s dissect this criticism:

‘You’ve been an asshole lately’ is an example of Emotive criticism. Your friend is simultaneously expressing his negative emotion, and trying to make you feel bad. Although this part of the criticism doesn’t actually tell you much of anything about your flaws, it shows how angry your friend is which is important to know.

The second part, “You’re so busy with your new girlfriend” is Ignorant criticism. In this case, it has nothing to do with what you’re being criticized for, and is merely your friends misperception of the situation, since your girlfriend had nothing to do with you not calling back. Though this doesn’t relate to your flaws, it presents an opportunity to correct your friend’s misunderstanding, and explain what really happened.

The last part, “You don’t even call me back anymore. You’re going to lose friends if you keep treating people like this.” is Accurate criticism. It represents a useful call to action. You need to figure out a system for reminding yourself when you need to return a call, or you might actually lose friends. It can be upsetting to think of yourself as having been flaky, but in this case it’s a fact that you have been. Now that you’re aware of it, you can do something about it.

Breaking criticism into these three parts (Accurate, Ignorant, Emotive) will streamline the process of extracting useful information.

Criticism is easier to hear when you have sought it out than when it is thrust on you. And most people won’t volunteer it, until they are quite annoyed. So don’t wait until criticism comes your way. Seek criticism from your friends, your boss, and your spouse. Even acquaintances can provide an interesting perspective. Break down this criticism into the Accurate, Ignorant, and Emotive components. Know your flaws so you can correct them. Become greater.

Just ask people. In a poll of high school seniors, only 2% thought they were below average in leadership ability, and 25% believed they were in the top 1% of ability to get along with others (note: this survey was conducted by the college board, and it is possible students feared the results would be shared with colleges). What an exceptional bunch this group of one million students must have been! American students are also apparently really good drivers. In another survey, 93% of them claimed to be in the top 50% of driving skill. Yet another poll found that 87% of Stanford MBA students rated their academic performance as being in the top 50%. Paradoxical grade inflation perhaps?

But it’s not just students that are convinced of their own greatness. A survey of university professors found that 94% thought they were better at their jobs than their average colleagues. In a poll of teachers at the University of Nebraska, 68% rated themselves as being in the top 25% for teaching ability. More remarkably still, a survey of sociologists discovered that nearly half believed they would become among the top ten leaders in their field.

What’s wrong with all these people that allows them to delude themselves into thinking they are so great? The same things that are wrong with you and me. It’s painful to think that we are below average in some important way, or bested by our peers. It’s unpleasant to see ourselves as possessing many flaws, and to blame our failures on our traits rather than circumstances. Our minds tend to flee from painful thoughts, much like our hands retract from a hot stove. And we inadvertently condition ourselves: when we think about how great we are, it feels good, positively reinforcing further nice thoughts about ourselves in the future. When we admit our flaws, it hurts, and this punishment discourages future self-examination.

There certainly do exist people who have a genuinely negative self-images. Depressed people, in particular, often believe themselves to be inadequate or worthless, and there are plenty of other people with low self-esteem. Unfortunately this state is rarely a productive one, and in many cases is no more realistic than the more typical delusions of greatness. There also do seem to be some cases where people systematically downplay their abilities. For example, it may be that case that while people with below average IQs tend to overestimate their IQs on average, people who are above average underestimate them. Self reported intelligence typically has a correlation of less than 0.30 with IQ score.

One of the biggest problems with an unrealistic self-image is that it can severely impair our ability and inclination to self improve. If you already think you are an above median driver, as 93% of surveyed American students did, will you feel motivated to become a better, safer driver? If, like 68% of teachers surveyed at University of Nebraska, you believe you are in the top 25% of teaching ability, are you really going to try to improve yourself as a teacher? If you believe that you are less flawed than those around you, your sense of superiority may well make you less interested in acknowledging and reducing your flaws. Even an unrealistically negative self-image may impair self-improvement. It may cause you to overestimate the importance of small flaws, or cause you to give up if you believe you are too worthless to be fixable.

Your actual flaws don’t disappear just because you pretend you don’t have them. In fact, ignoring them will make it much more likely that they persist indefinitely. You make yourself a worse person (more deluded, less likely to improve) by pretending that you are a better person than you are. You become a better person (with beliefs more closely mirroring reality, and more motivation to change) by acknowledging your flaws and accepting that you may be a worse person than you thought. We are all significantly flawed. But with some effort, we can become less flawed.

Here’s a quick exercise you can do to help you have truer beliefs about yourself, and become an improved person.

1. Make a list of at least 3 fixable ways that you are significantly flawed. If you can’t think of three things in a few minutes, then add to this list your poor understanding of your weaknesses.

2. For each of these flaws, write down a brief explanation of how your life or the lives of others would be better if you improved the flaw.

3. Next, write down a strategy that you can carry out to improve the flaw.

4. Write down something you can do right now that will help ensure that you actually carry out this strategy.

5. Now, go ahead and do what you wrote down in step 4!

Here’s a printable version of this exercise: