Let criticism teach without letting it become ownership.

Criticism can improve the work without acquiring any authority over it. The distinction matters because people who cannot make it either reject all feedback or hand over the steering wheel to whoever criticized most confidently. You can take the information and keep the direction.

When feedback arrives, extract what is true about the work and set aside what is about the critic’s preferences. Then decide, deliberately, what to change. The decision remains yours regardless of how sure they sounded.