The number of haters you have online is probably one of the best measures of how much you are putting yourself out there and sharing your unique message to the world. And if we were to reframe the amount of success you are having in your space with how many people choose to hate on what you do, we would probably see a lot more people continue to follow their dreams.
Your level of success in business and life will be capped by how many haters you are willing to have. Read that again, because it is often the number one reason why people don’t progress further in this era of social influence. Most people would continue to grow their brand and their message to the moon if there was no hate on the other side of love, but in reality we all stunt our own growth when the pain of the hate exceeds the pleasure of the praise.
Because as you build a larger audience and have a larger reach, you will have more people that love what you do, conversely you will also have more people that hate what you do, for no reason other than they have a different world view to you - and that is normal and healthy in a balanced universe. If your work pleased everyone, it would be inauthentic to you and it would simply be an act of trying to be a version of yourself that is a lie; and the cognitive dissonance that accompanies this would be more painful in the long run.
If you can learn to love and appreciate the haters, you will grow your reach and social influence further and further. There is no need to play small to avoid the opinions of others. In fact, by doing this you are missing out on helping the people who need to hear your message, the people you set out to help and make a genuine difference in their lives.
But learning to appreciate the hate and hurtful opinions can be hard
Whenever you perceive "hate" or "challenge", answer these 3 questions to begin to breakdown and dissolve the uneasy feeling that accompanies it:
Who is appreciative of what this person hates?
People hate for many reasons - they may have a different world view, they may have tried and failed something, they may be a part of a group that does the opposite, or they might just be having a hard time in their own lives and attempting to bring you down helps them to feel larger in the status game they are playing inside their own mind.
However, spend a moment identifying people who love you for exactly what this person hates. Just because someone else hates it, it doesn’t mean that someone else doesn’t love and appreciate the exact same thing. I’m a business coach and when people comment saying that something I help people with is a scam, it helps to remember the number of people that have had amazing success with the same thing; it simply may have failed for that person for any number of reasons and this helps them justify to themselves that it’s the method, not them that failed - sorry bud…it was you!
What part of it is true?
Let’s be real, someone could post an entire essay on why they hate everything about what you do, and you would laugh at most of it, especially the parts that have absolutely zero basis to them. However, the parts that hurt tend to be painful because there is some truth in it, because there is a part of you that you don’t fully accept and love. If you can understand and accept those parts of yourself, you will no longer feel triggered by the hate.
For example if you’re overweight, but you don’t care at all, and someone labels you fat, you respond very differently than if that was a part of yourself that you didn’t love. I remember seeing a post where someone in the comments called the author fat, and he responded with a photo of himself eating a KFC bucket with a thumbs up, asking “would a fat person do this?” Not surprisingly, there was no further response from the hater in question…
How is this an act of love?
If you were to only get praise for your work, you would not improve half as much. When a hater leaves a comment that stings, they are providing you with an opportunity to work on yourself, to better love that part of you. They are inadvertently helping you to grow, to learn and to improve; and once you see this you will begin to appreciate something that used to hold you back.
And on a side note - hate comments can be amazing for your content - if you’ve ever watched Jimmy Kimmel’s, “celebrities read mean tweets” you’ll understand! We once created ‘Jasmin reads mean comments’ & it was one of my favourite pieces of content to date! I honestly look forward to more mean comments these days.
And finally, if you are fearful of the judgement and reprimand of others, it is because your world is like a mirror, and when you envision yourself in their shoes, you would judge, talk shit and make fun of people behind their back. If you want to lose the fear of being judged, stop judging others.
