I had an experience of how a normal person apparently responds to criticism.

I am a college teacher, and every semester, I get back anonymous evaluations of my teaching from my students. They are never as good as I want them to be (which is to say, they are medium, about C or B), and I obsess over them. I have a bunch that I am saving for the weekend, so that I can read them on Friday, and have at least 48 hours to recover and get my confidence back up, before I go back in the classroom again.

Okay, so nothing funny so far. I share an office with another profesor, a guy whose about 20 years younger than I, a really family man with three kids and a high-powered lawyer wife. He's laughing when I walk into the office, with the evaluations in his hands, and he says, "Listen to this one: 'There were questions on the tests from the textbook, and he didn't cover everything in class.' Imagine that. The nerve of me -- to expect students to read the textbook!"

Me, I read that, and I think, "How can I cover the entire textbook during the class periods? That's the not possible, but there must be a way. How can please every single last one of them, no matter how absurd the demand?"

His laughter certainly was an eye opener about how a person with self-esteem might respond!