If you’ve ever felt defensive, overwhelmed, or unsure when someone points something out, you’re not alone. In today’s episode of the Babies and Business Podcast, Avram and Rachel break down how to receive feedback in a way that helps you grow instead of shutting down. They dive into why feedback feels so triggering, how to separate facts from the stories you tell yourself, and what to do when criticism shows up unexpectedly. If you want to level up in business, parenting, and everyday life, this conversation will give you practical tools to move forward with clarity.

Show Notes

Key Highlights from this Episode:

• Avram and Rachel talk about what feedback really means and why it often feels uncomfortable.
  
• How past experiences shape your reaction to criticism.
  
• A real story about a tense text exchange and how reframing it as feedback changed everything.
  
• Key question to calm emotional reactions: “If this was just feedback, what is it telling me?”
  
• Why feedback is not a measure of your worth.
  
• How business results act as feedback about your habits, mindset, and systems.
  
• The risks of ignoring feedback or pretending it does not matter.
  
• Avram’s recent experiences of giving and receiving honest feedback and how it shifted his leadership.
  
• Practical tips on how to receive feedback without feeling attacked so you can stay calm, curious, and grounded instead of defensive.
  
• When feedback should guide you and when it is okay to stay aligned with your values.
  
• Simple mindset tools to help you use feedback for growth in work, parenting, and daily life.

Mentions & Resources

Permission-based feedback — A feedback approach where you give feedback in the right context and with consent/asking (rather than forcing it on someone); Avram explicitly calls out that “the proper context for feedback… is permission based.” 

Feedback —  Information returned to you (from people, results, or systems) that helps you adjust behavior or decisions; this is the central “tool” they keep referring to throughout the episode.

Toxic positivity — The pressure to stay positive no matter what, in a way that dismisses or invalidates real negative emotions; mentioned when they clarify they’re not advocating “toxic positivity.”

Mentioned Episodes

Babies & Business EP 114 – Setting Realistic Goals When You’re Not Sure Where to Start

Episode Transcription

Below you will find a transcript of this entire podcast episode. Enjoy!

Avram: Raise your hand. Now, you, you might look funny if you’re driving right now. Raise your hand if you’ve ever been nervous or even scared of what somebody might think of you. I think we’ve all on different levels felt, um, strange about what other people might think of us.

Rachel: Nervous, anxious.

Avram: It’s really, it’s really like kind of like beat into us as a society, right? The, the desire to be liked

Rachel: Yep.  Likable.

Avram: Like likable to fit in. That’s the problem that we face, I think on a daily basis. It’s not the topic of this conversation.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: The talk about today’s conversation is, is a riff On last week we talked about finding your two point A,

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: and we sort of ended sharing about feedback and how to find out where you truly are is a combination of honest self-reflection and external feedback, right?

Some different data, and it could be in the form of somebody. A person having a conversation with you. Okay. You know, quote, telling it like it is. But it could also be, you know, in the last podcast we talked about numbers in a financial plan, the numbers provide feedback on the story that’s going on.

Rachel: Yeah, it’s objective. It is black and white. It is very clear. You are in the hole every month or you are excelling and you’re meeting your financial goals.

Avram: Mm-hmm.

Rachel: You have a financial story to tell. And you get to figure out what that is so we did use that as the example, and I’m excited about talking about this in, or just talking about in general about feedback and what that is and what a gift it can be in your life when you harness it.

To serve your life instead of feel like it’s, it’s happening to you. That life is happening to you or that. Oh my gosh. You know, I know, I know people that they don’t have a car very long ever because they get rear ended or into an accident or something, you know, they’re constantly getting beaten back.

Um, and that’s feedback. That’s life giving you real big, serious feedback.

Avram: real strong feedback. I mean, this, this is about looking at your relationship with feedback and assessing whether or not it’s, it’s working for you.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: And so if you’ve ever felt yourself shrinking back from saying what you really wanna say, whether that’s at a family gathering or on social media, this podcast episode is for you. If you’ve ever been worried about whether people like you or not based on how you’re showing up in group environments or one-on-one. You know if, if you find yourself with thoughts like, I wonder what they thought about me, this podcast episode is for you. If you’re somebody who wants to achieve more in their business, and maybe you’ve been stuck for a little while, this podcast is for you because I would assert and assume that.

There is either a lack of feedback in your life that would help you become better, or that you have been denying it and making up stories about why it doesn’t matter or mean anything, which is also a very interesting trap to be in. This podcast episode is for you. Yeah. So is it story time?

Rachel: it’s story time. It’s story

Avram: time.

So Rachel and I were in this really heated, um, text exchange with a long, long time friend, um, where they wanted something from us, right? Uh, they were right to want it from us, but what was clear was that the timeline in which we were getting those things back, uh, or getting those things to them, um, was not clear.

 Right. Uh, and that the timeline that they had in mind was not the same as the one that we had

Rachel: Yeah. And even so the tipping point was when, uh, there was a text sent to us and the response wasn’t immediate, and then they chime in, like,

Avram: The very next morning like

Rachel: just with very little, very little time lapse. No time for our life. Like we have children, we have things going on. We might’ve seen your text, but we didn’t get right back to it.

And this person was very, very, very irritated about it and pretty rude with the response that [00:05:30] was sent. Like, kind of like if they were in person, they’re shaking your shoulders saying What’s wrong with you? Gimme an answer.

Avram: hello. You know, like that kind of a vibe.

Rachel: that, that was the text, uh, stuff that was sent to us.

Avram: Mm. Mm-hmm.

Rachel: I remember we were separate at the time I had received the text. You’d received the text. And when we got back together that morning when we came together and, and we had a conversation, I was like, did you see that text? Or maybe I said, I saw that you saw the text because you responded.

Avram: Yes.

Rachel: Um, but I was pretty frustrated and

Avram: You were really fired up

Rachel: Outside of my limit of being able to actually understand why I was feeling the way that I was feeling because I was really projecting how things have gone in the past into my reality and making, making meaning out of what was sent. And, and also judging the fact that I’m so different and that was so rude, and how could you be that way and all the things that I was projecting onto it and, and the meaning that I was assigning to.

Avram: Yeah. And I was very grounded and very centered in that moment. And it like, okay, there’s a lot of contrast in there. It’s like, well, how did I, how did I arrive there after having my initial reaction was very similar to Rachel’s reaction. Um, but I didn’t stay there long, and the reason I didn’t stay there long was because of how I interpreted the feedback. What was the feedback? The feedback was how this person was showing up in the moment,

Rachel: yeah.

Avram: Right? And so what Rachel had the pleasure of was finding a lot of things that that meant, which had her upset.

Rachel: Yep. I was pretty upset and I was like, oh my gosh, I do not want to respond to this. Don’t even know how to respond to it.

Avram: Yes, I was able to extract myself from that feeling because of how I interpreted the feedback. So I said, Rachel, um, you know, what did I say?

Rachel: You said, well, what if it’s just feedback? Yes. You, you, you, um, first off you said, well, that was my initial reaction, and then I asked the question, well, what if this is just feedback? And if it’s just feedback, then what does it mean? And then you said, well, this person, they’re an asshole.

Avram: Like I said, this person is being an asshole.

Rachel: Yeah, exactly.

Avram: Right now. That’s the feedback. It’s like. Not all of the stories and things that were told. It’s like this is just the person in this moment is showing up, they’re being an asshole. Right. And then we just started laughing

Rachel: We did, and it actually dispersed all of the energy around it. All of the judgments, the meaning, all that stuff. And it, it diffused all of what I was feeling.

Avram: Mm-hmm. And that was like the useful part to take from that interaction, right? Because there was really no right and no wrong way. You know? Yeah. To do it, or there’s no right way to do it. Right. Sure. You know, it’s like, well, one option was to just bend over backwards and just comply with the request.

It’s like, well, that doesn’t really work for me right now, so I’m not going to do that. So what is the other option? The other option is to stand my ground. Assert what does work for us and acknowledge on our side, this person is just being an asshole right now.

Rachel: Yeah, and then, you know, I felt like, you know, nod to our previous episode, I felt like saying they’re being an asshole right now. They’re acting like an asshole right now. Got us to our true point A in this situation we’re dealing with someone that is showing behaviors like an asshole.

Avram: Yes.

Rachel: How would we like to deal with an asshole?

And then it was very, very clear. What would be the next step

Avram: exactly and so then we just proceeded through those next steps, and guess what? We didn’t have more crap like that. It was easily resolved. It was like, you know, there are other times in my life with similar situations where I would’ve just thrown it back at him. That would’ve made it a lot worse.

Rachel: so much worse.

Avram: Right.

And so I think the part that was powerful was trying to get as close to as possible, like, what, what is this?

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: What do I do with it?

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: Sometimes you don’t do anything with it, just acknowledge it. Right? What do I do with it? And um, you know, like you had to ask, you know, what are the stories that I’m making about this?

Rachel: Exactly. Yeah,

Avram: then looking at where does it mean, you know, like what does this actually mean?

Rachel: exactly. Well, you know, asking what are the stories I’m making about it? Well, what, what I found out was that I was bringing my previous interactions with this person into the present that haven’t been so great recently. And it was really stressful because part of me, you know, part of us wants to avoid pain and discomfort and uh, and disagreements and all the things, but that’s not the reality.

So when faced with this, just recognizing that it doesn’t mean anything about you or them, we’re just in it together and we can get out of it by showing up a little bit differently. You know, my mom would always say it takes two to fight and I refuse to fight. You know, if there was an argument between my, maybe my dad had a different point of view, my mom, her viewpoint was that she didn’t have to participate. And I see that as being changing what we bring to the situation. Maybe we’ve acted a certain way in the past and we can act a different way. From more of a more centered viewpoint. And we’re not bringing in, well, you did this and well, I did this and well, this is how it’s always been. And you know, then you have all those things that just don’t come to a resolution.

Um, I also like to ask when I’m feeling a little bit like things are being done to me. And in this situation, there was a timeline that was, uh, required that we needed to do something by a certain timeline. And after I was able to understand and, and hear, well, they’re just acting like an asshole right now.

Then I was able to ask the question, well, how is this serving me? How can this serve me and moving forward with, with power instead of it ruining my day like it would in the past? Moving on it doesn’t mean anything, so it’s pretty powerful.

Avram: I think that where I’d like to go next is to, to look at feedback in terms of, you know, how life is showing up around you. And then look at how feedback can be a really powerful tool to use, and the ways that you, that you can use it. I think a good way to, to wrap us is, is there, because we have some stories around that.

Um. The results of what’s showing up in your life right now, just look at your business, the total revenue number of clients or customers, your number of team members, you know, anything you wanna look at inside of your business. The results that are showing up right now are giving you feedback

Rachel: Sure.

Avram: on how effective you have been, right?

So if you are making more money this year than last year. There are things that you have done that have been effective in creating that result.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: If you’re making less money this year than last year, that is feedback, giving you some information that some things that you have done or haven’t done have led to a decrease in revenue.

Rachel: Yep.

Avram: Anything else you want to share about how results are giving you real time feedback? I know you, you said something about worth, right?

Rachel: Yeah. You know, I mean, for me. Uh, so growing up, starting working at the age of eight for my dad, my worth was literally tied to how much I produced for him. Basically, I was told that I was worth, I felt worthless because of this situation when I didn’t do what was required of me. And I saw my results as my worth, but I’ve been able to extract that and see that there, there are two facets to this.

It’s what we do and it’s the results that we are receiving is simply feedback on where we are. Maybe we have an upper limit to how much we can receive in our bank account, and we are saying no to more. We self-sabotage. When we get more, we lose clients. There’s so many things that that could, that story could tell us about just simply the feedback of where we are in our business.

And then it’s also recognizing that regard. So where you are doesn’t mean anything until so so once you get clear on your, on where you are in your business, the revenue and that it’s less or more than last year, you’re comparing it to what you’ve done. So you find out where you are and then it doesn’t actually mean anything until you start comparing.

 So you can compare yourself with where you are now to where you were last year. Where you’d like to go. You can also compare yourself to other people. And you can do so to your heart’s content until you feel really shitty about where you are because, you feel like you’re behind, you should be here when you’re not there.

You should be there. When you’re here, you should be like them. You should show up like this. And just remembering, it’s such a helpful thing for me to remember that where I am is where I am. And admitting this quickly can help me on my journey to get where I want to go.

Avram: Mm-hmm.

Rachel: And the longer I stand denying where I am or making it mean something about my worth, the longer or possibly never, I will never reach the goals that I have because I’m still stuck in my shame around where I am or that I thinking maybe making up the stories that I can’t get where I want to go because I have a lack of education or I have a lack of opportunity, or I have you name it.

But there’s a lot of things that can come up. But if we’re using our situation, whatever it might be as feedback to let us know where we are on our journey to where we want to be. It’s very helpful.

Avram: And as you can see, it takes some work to separate the stories from what’s actually going on. Um, and that’s, that’s why the previous episode is such a good one for this. Um. And it’s a slippery slope. It can be to not attach too much meaning to the feedback that you’re receiving and to keep it on its own.

Hopefully you can see from just what Rachel shared, that sometimes you get the feedback and you have to dig a little bit to discover what part of it is for you and is important for you to hear. Sometimes you get the, you get the feedback and you look at like, well, what is the, what is the my track record in this area?

Am I creating the same thing over and over? Well, guess what the feedback’s telling me. Feedback’s telling me that like something needs to change with my mindset. You may not know exactly what that is until you do some more reflection or you get a somebody else to, to help you out with it. Sometimes the feedback is really straightforward.

It’s the numbers on a page. Other times it takes some digging for you to figure out what it really means, how it’s important to you, what’s relevant and what’s not relevant.

Rachel: Yeah. And that question, you know, how is this serving me is a really good one when you’re trying to get down to, you know, what, how is. What is the nugget here? What is this thing that I can take and propel me into my future? Something that might have been maybe a, um, uh, invisible to me. Uh, whatever you say.

How intangible. Well, no, I’m thinking about, uh, we are just not aware of it. Um, our, our blind spot. So some things are a blind spot to us and they get pointed out to us by people around us, our situation, all the things that are going on, and we can choose to help that change the perspective around it to see the good in it.

I’m not saying like this toxic positivity, positive, just to be positive, but to see what is the thing that could serve me in the future. And it’s pretty powerful when I’ve used this, uh, just in this, in this circumstance that we talked about with this friend, was just putting it into perspective of how they were showing up was a reflection on them.

It wasn’t a reflection on me and that things needed to change and it didn’t need to affect how I felt. They were being an asshole. And that’s why I felt the way I felt. But then it made, it made, I made meaning about it. So it’s kind of circular.

Avram: Yes. So on the, on the one side life’s results, uh as discussed can be hard to separate all the meaning and the stories from it to, to be able to make the feedback useful. On the other side of it, there’s also sometimes the tendency to make that feedback meaningless

Rachel: Yeah. Correct.

Avram: Right? And so like I’ve fallen under that trap before and where, you know, we were stuck at the same revenue for about three years.

And so I chose to look at that feedback and just dismiss it.

Rachel: Yes.

Avram: So that I could pretend to myself that I was doing more, being, more, being, becoming better, right? And so I just dismissed it and was so that I could further pretend that I was upleveling

Rachel: yeah,

Avram: when I didn’t want to come to terms with the feedback that was showing me.

Bro, you are stuck right now. Like it’s okay to be stuck, but like let’s just acknowledge what stuck looks like, because if you can see that, then you’ll know it’s time to call a tow truck. We are not getting outta this thing on our own, it’s time to call a tow truck. You know? And that’s the difference with that.

So I just wanted to touch on, on that piece because, um, I think entrepreneurs, it’s easy to ignore certain things. 

Rachel: And just power through it, you know, just get through it. But when there are things that are continually happening and we’re just ignoring them, what are the level ups that we are denying. Because our head is in the sand about this thing. You know, like when we’ve lost clients in the past, when they have said, okay, we’re done with your service.

Well, we kind of had our head in the sand thinking, oh, well we kind of knew that they were unhappy, but we didn’t really do anything about it. And we pretended to be shocked when they left and they were giving us feedback all along that we could have acted on. And, uh, there’s some really great stuff.

It’s not about always changing and always pivoting and, and making everybody happy. It, it’s truly about, um, just asking what are these nuggets that we can take along with us?

Avram: Yeah. I wanted to, to wrap us up with, with feedback and how important it is if you wanna grow your business and had this experience at a recent event where. I gave somebody some feedback where I essentially said, just to paint the context for it, we are all there to grow and be better. And so, you know, I was being asked, what is my feedback?

And so then I shared it. I just didn’t, I didn’t like go up to this person and be like, this is what I have to share with you. It was asked for, and it’s the proper context for feedback. It’s permission based.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: The feedback that I gave them was. Well, two people, one person, I gave feedback and I said, you’re not showing up like you’re hiding. My experience of you is that you’ve been hiding and, um, I wouldn’t want to, you know, spend time on a desert island with you. ’cause I feel like I, I couldn’t trust that you’d show up. Right. What was so cool is seeing that feedback, hearing from that person days later saying, you know what? You told it to me straight. I so appreciate that what you did for me. I found out how defensive I was about that topic and I had to do some inner work. That feedback was important to them and that how they showed up at the next event that I went to was entirely different. Right they were like, you know what, I’m not doing that again.

I am gonna show up and play full out. And they moved the entire room on several occasions in a powerful way. I gave somebody else feedback. They came to me and they’re asking like, what is like, what’s your feedback for me? I said, you show up in all these different ways, like you’re like a chameleon and you put on a different mask, a different version of you, and none of them is actually you.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: You know, and their interpretation of that was like they were able to see, they came and shared this with me later, like, thank you because I needed to hear that. Um, because it’s kinda reflecting some of the stuff that I’ve, I’ve been feeling bubbling up lately. Like, you’re right. Like I’m not showing up authentically as me.

I’m so glad that you told it to me straight because nobody else was sharing that. Right. That’s where my relationship with feedback changed, was with these two interactions. There were a couple others that were similar in that me being willing to be honest. Especially in that context where it was very safe for all of us, was a powerful thing.

It was so important to that person’s next breakthrough.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: The same thing was shared with me at a recent event. I got feedback from three, it might’ve been four people like in a row, that when I was showing up, thinking and feeling confident, they saw me as showing up as arrogant.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: And I was like, whoa. That is something that I want to be aware of, especially in a leadership position.

If people are perceiving me that way, I need to be aware of that. That’s a, that’s a turnoff to people who I would want to enroll in the mission. That feedback is so important to me. I could have been defensive about it

Rachel: Or written it off.

Avram: and written it off or acknowledge it for what it is and been like, huh. There’s something to that four people are telling me that there is something to that. What can I do with that? How can I show up different? You know? There can also be places where people give you that feedback and you might say, you know what? I hear it. I’m not gonna change a thing because I know that this aligns with my values.

Rachel: Sure.

Avram: But you still have to be open to it.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: And that’s what I wanted to share about. How my relationship with it changed because I saw both giving it and receiving it and how important honesty was. You know, I could have shared just a really vanilla, I could have chosen very vanilla feedback for

Rachel: People pleaser too.

Avram: People pleasing, right? And then I would’ve denied them the gift that they were actually looking for.

Rachel: Yeah. Absolutely. Agreed. I love that you shared that. Feedback is really powerful, especially when asked like you said, feedback is amazing when you ask and receive that feedback. Um, feedback is not always given with your consent.

Avram: It’s not.

Rachel: Sometimes you feel like it is thrust upon you. You’re in a situation that you feel like maybe you can’t handle.

Uh, you’re feeling charged up about it, but you know, it’s, what we’re trying to say is. When you’re feeling a certain way, you’re just feeling frustrated, anxious, defensive, um, all these feelings that just don’t feel so great, being able to ask, well, if this was just feedback, what would it be telling me?

And that could be so wonderful. Um, I know they say don’t change your processes, systems, stuff, anything about your business based off of one person’s feedback, and that’s great. Uh, but when we see feedback coming in and it’s the same kind of thing over and over and over, that, that could be that something were you to change it could just improve what people are feeling, seeing, or receiving, like you being perceived as arrogant. Four people told you that. Not a coincidence. Four people in a row told you that all the things come up together. So that could lend to maybe some personal growth. Personal reflection on how you show up and how could you take that confidence and portray it a different way that comes across as confident as opposed to arrogant.

And make room for people to also contribute and collaborate with you, depending on the circumstances. And just this wonderful thing that we’re trying to, to portray to you is that you can change how you feel about feedback in the moment by simply asking the question, if this were feedback, what would it be telling me?

 And it, it worked amazingly to take the charge out of what I was feeling and then just be able to objectively go and do something about it and have a really great outcome.

Avram: Yep. Yep. So, yeah, what’s your feedback? Are we a five star podcast? Are we a four star podcast, right? Are we a two star podcast? Let us know. Get on Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever it is you, listen, give us your rating. We would love the feedback. And, uh, with that, we appreciate you for listening and we’ll catch you on the next episode.

Rachel: Bye for.