Comment by garganzol

Don't pay too much attention to the inner-circle feedback. Some people subconsciously use the tone of reception to control you, especially peers/colleagues are prone to this. They see someone having a bright idea, and they genuinely don't like it just because it makes them feel small in comparison. The thing they do next - they try to extinguish the spark by creating an illusion of worthlessness in your mind. By doing so, they are getting rid of a potential competitor on their own way to success. According to psychology, they start feeling normal again by reducing you, this is a natural compensatory mechanism ingrained in human archetypes.

The key thing here is to be able to discern between real and manipulated input information. For this, gut feeling usually works best: it spots that whiny, attention-insisting, importance-seeking, fear-inducing tone of a manipulator, but oftentimes the higher-level nervous system of the brain suppresses that signal (e.g. "How can a well-educated and charismatic person feel a bit off and responsibility-lacking sometimes? It cannot be right, so it must be something with my interpretation of reality. I bet they have the best intentions.")

An even better approach may be not to search for feedback at all, unless it's shared naturally without any strings attached.