If you’ll allow me to toot my own horn for a second (toot, toot – sorry, couldn’t resist. Oh, I’m sorry – did you forget that I’m a nerd?), if there is one thing you can always count on me for, it is that I am great at receiving feedback, no matter the source. In fact, you could be my arch enemy and I would still take your feedback to heart.

Well. Now you could. Needless to say, I wasn’t always this way.

When I first started working for lululemon, I prided myself on being the most amazing educator (lululemon speak for salesperson). I excelled in customer experience. Being the daughter of a 40-year veteran flight attendant, you get to learn some skills (seriously – the plane could have been going down and my mother would have been smiling – not a hair out of place – and asking you how she could help make you more comfortable). I’ve always loved people, and absolutely adore making them feel special.

Besides being an educator, one of the other hats I wore at lululemon was as the community leader. It was my job to create and maintain relationships with local fitness personalities, studios, ambassadors and R&D members. On community days, rather than work the floor, I was to take yoga classes (tough life), update the community board that hung in the store with schedules, information and the like, plan events, and basically just build and maintain relationships in the community.

One day, at a staff meeting, we were doing a feedback exercise. We had to form two lines and sit across from each other. Each person had 30-60 seconds to give feedback to the person sitting in front of them. It could have been anything, but it had to be constructive, and it had to come with a solution (feedback without a solution is just complaining).

“Ha!” I thought to myself. “I’d like to see anyone try to give me feedback! I’m A + all around, baby!”

(Maybe I didn’t say those exact words, but the sentiment was certainly akin to them).

My inflated ego was stroked throughout the first few rounds as my peers kept saying the same thing, “I honestly don’t think you could change anything! I don’t know what to say!”

Um, duh.

(Don’t you just want to slap me?)

But everything changed when the new girl sat in front of me. I was the first to speak, and I told her that since we hadn’t worked together yet, I didn’t think it would be right to give her feedback, since I didn’t have a gauge on what she needed to work on. Thinking she would say the same thing, because again – we hadn’t had a chance to work together in any capacity yet – I waited for the schpeel I heard from my other peers (you’re perfect, you’re amazing, everyone loves you, don’t change a thing, you’re lululemon’s glory, blah, blah, blah. No pictures, please).

I was about to get a reality check. And friends, I wasn’t going to like it. Not one bit.

“Well…” she started to say.

“Huh?” I thought to myself.

“When you’re on your community days and you come into the store to update the community board, you tend to go right to the board and not pay attention to any of the guests in the store,” she started to say, “I think it would be great if you remembered that you’re also an educator, and even though you’re not technically on the floor, you should pay attention to guests and help them if they need help.”

I felt like I had been slapped in the face.

That bitch!

The nerve!

How dare she!

We need to fire her immediately!

I am the queen of customer service, sweetheart. I don’t miss anyone. I always smile, and I’m always helpful. I’m downright delightful you no-good-new-girl-who-doesn’t-know-her-face-from-her-ass!

Of course, I was too polite (or rather, stunned) to say anything back, so I thanked her for the feedback and put her straight on my naughty list (though I had some more colorful words for her on that list. Like fart brain and weener. You know – the harsh ones. We didn’t swear much in my household. Can you tell?).

When I left that meeting, I finally understood the term arch enemy. She was definitely mine. I silently declared that she and I would never be friends. She was a disgrace to lululemon, as far as I was concerned. And this feedback exercise was stupid, in my opinion. What good is giving someone feedback if it’s not even true? Or if it’s made up?

I barely slept that night, thinking of all the mean things I wish I had remembered in the moment to say to her. I marched right into my manager’s office the next morning to tell her just how I felt about that stupid exercise in no uncertain terms.

“Well,” my manager said calmly, “sometimes we get feedback from people we don’t know, and even though they don’t know us, sometimes they are right.”

“Pa-leeze,” I thought to myself. I may not have said it out loud, but she certainly could see it on my face. So she tried a new tactic:

“Can you look yourself in the eye and honestly tell yourself that you greet every single guest who comes into the store when you’re on your community days?”

“Of cour……” I stopped.

Crap. Cock. Balls. Shit. Fack. Son of a nutcracker.

I couldn’t. I honestly couldn’t.

Sensing the wheels turning in my head (I think there may have been smoke coming out of my ears), she continued:

“Feedback is simply someone else’s perception of you. It’s someone else’s experience with you at any given moment. You may think you’re always being one way, but in reality, you may be acting in such a way as to contradict that.”

Damn. She was good.

I was still pissed off, but through the haze of my anger, I was starting to get the message:

The messenger doesn’t matter. It’s the message that counts.

My arch enemy (yeah, I still didn’t like her. I know. Real mature) had cast a new light on how I was showing up as an educator. She had given me gift – a golden opportunity to change something I thought I was already being so that I could actually have the chance to be that person. And had she kept her mouth shut, I never would have known, and who knows what could have happened?

She gave me the opportunity to be a better person. How can I fault her for that?

Did it make me like her? No. But that’s ok. That’s not what this is about. We don’t have to like all of life’s teachers. We just have to hear their messages.

Over the years – especially living in LA – I have heard some nasty things about public personalities we know and love. People who we often quote. People who have written books about inspiration, motivation, love, life, happiness and forgiveness. I have heard stories about how those people treat those around them, and trust me, their behavior doesn’t jive with their message. In fact, in most cases, it downright goes directly against it. I will keep those names to myself for their protection – and yours (though it is apparently a well documented fact that Gandhi – Mr. Nonviolence himself – beat his wife. So….?).

But there it is again: the messenger doesn’t matter. It’s the message that counts.

Sometimes we just need to hear something said in a particular way in order for us to make a shift. If that message can change our lives, why does the source of the message matter?

It shouldn’t. It doesn’t. Not unless we make it matter. And as I’ve learned time and time again – no matter how much I resist it – the only meaning anything has is the one we give it.

So go ahead: ask for that feedback and take the unsolicited stuff too, whether you like the person or not. Listen to your favorite inspirational people – including Gandhi. Don’t be bothered with who they are or how they act. None of us are perfect humans. We all have our flaws. And they shouldn’t be any different. Just listen for the message, apply what works to your life, and discard the rest.

Don’t shoot the messenger.