Idea 69: Avoid negative critics
Ideas, especially when they are green shoots in your mind, are very vulnerable to the frost of negative criticism; later they may be able to take the strain. So avoid negative critics and let your ideas come to life.
Johann Schiller, a celebrated German poet who trained as a lawyer, then became a military surgeon and ended his career as professor of history at Jena in 1788, once wrote to a friend:
The reason for your complaint [about not being creative] lies, it seems to me, in the constraint which your intellect imposes upon your imagination. Here I will make an observation, and illustrate it by an allegory. Apparently, it is not good – and indeed it hinders the creative work of the mind – if the intellect examines ...
