When you’re dealing with haters, the first thing you have to remember is Taylor Swift:
Haters gonna hate. It’s just what they do. And most of the
time, what they do isn’t in your control. However, what you do have control over is
your mind. You are the sole arbiter of what matters and what doesn’t. You guard the
gates to your mood. So it’s your job to not let that negativity get inside your head.
None of that noise can lower your self-worth or decrease your self-esteem if you decide
it won’t. So let’s look at how to keep your head in
the game and out of the gutter.
What’s up Explearners. Mary Daphne here of explearning.co where we believe social
skills are the key to the Good Life. What’s the Good Life? It’s where you call the shots,
you have a crew you can count on, and you’re on a mission you care about.
Negative comments come from people in all shapes and sizes.
I think many of us will agree that, in some ways, getting an unsavory comment to our face
is different than getting it on social media. Face-to-face, you know more information about
the person, even if you don’t know them personally. You see how they look; you can
read their body language; you hear their tone of voice…there’s a lot of data there.
It’s easier to say: I care about this person’s opinion. Or on the flip side, you may immediately
determine that they’re off their rocker and probably just escaped the nearest loony
bin. When insults are delivered in person, the
person delivering them really needs to own the insult and take responsibility for it.
This accountability usually means that people are more polite to each other when they are
in the same room. They endeavor to establish a sense of civility and present themselves
as respectable, reasonable people. But on social media, the gloves come off.
People go from respectable and reasonable to downright bonkers. Their righteous fury
is triggered by anything under the sun - or, more realistically, a florescent light. And
in most cases, their detractions make no sense at all.
The reason for this discrepancy in behavior is obvious: online haters can hide behind
a fake name, a pseudonym and wear a digital mask. There’s much less accountability.
This is why it’s a lot more common to be insulted in our pixel-filled land of social
media and news feeds than IRL. Now just because we know WHY it happens, that
doesn’t make it any more pleasant. It sucks to get a hurtful comment.
But returning to our fearless heroine, TayTay reminds us that we “just gotta shake it
off”. With that in mind, let’s review two facts
that will help you shake things off in style: It’s Them, Not You: Most of the time, the
comment has much less to do with you and much more to do with issues the hater is dealing
with. They could be having a bad day, or they may have forgotten to take their meds, or
their favorite team just lost a match. Whatever the case, they are projecting their frustrations
on you. You don’t deserve it, but they don’t care, or may not even realize what they are
doing in the heat of the moment. Regardless, it has no association with the quality of
your work. You Mattered to Them: The hater took time
out of their day to tell you how they feel. Think about that for a second. That means
you’re worth something to them. That’s better than being ignored. They engaged with
you and that means you exerted some influence over them, so go you!
By acknowledging these two realities, you’re equipped to let the negative comments bounce
off you like water off an umbrella -ella, ella, ey, ey (okay, okay, enough with the
pop songs). Now, this isn’t to say that all negative
comments should be ignored. In fact, in aggregate, negative comments can be very helpful. Individual
people have their own opinions that may or may not jive with yours, but if you are seeking
to serve an audience, and a large portion of that audience is giving you a similar type
of constructive criticism on an independent basis (i.e., they aren’t just feeding off
of each other), that might be an opportunity for you to improve!
In other words, while individual negative comments should be taken with a large grain
of salt, when you start to see noticeable trends across a larger pool of data, you might
want to take note of why that might be, and act accordingly.
After all, none of us are perfect, and we should always be proactively looking for ways
to get better at our craft. ----
Okie dokie, that’s our scoop on haters. To recap, remember the following:
1. Most of the time, these people are just having a bad day
2. If they said anything at all, it’s because what you said mattered to them
3. If a large group of individuals are independently saying the same thing, you might want to turn
that into a learning opportunity Remember, Explearners. It’s a lot easier
to throw shade than to create something beautiful. My advice to the trolls out there: create,
don’t hate. Or as Jesse Jackson put it, “The only time you should look down at someone
is when you are helping them up.” But that’s a topic for another time.
In the meantime, let the haters keep hating, and you keep on creating. The world needs
more light in it. Don’t let anyone dim your brightness.
So now that I've shared our thoughts, I want to hear about what works for you. What other
strategies can you share with the Explearning community to deal with haters? And what challenges
have you encountered along the way? Share those two things with me in the comments
below. And, if you loved this lesson, please be sure
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Email this video to a friend or coworker who also wants to supercharge their social strategies.
While we’re at it, feel free to also share it with your Facebook friends as well!
And remember, the writeup of these lessons are always available on our blog at explearning.co/blog.
With that, have an awesome week, Explearners. Thank you so much for joining me and I’ll
see you next time for your next Explearning lesson.
Happy Explearning