HOW TO DEAL WITH NEGATIVE COMMENTS (MANAGE YOUR FEAR OF WHAT OTHERS THINK OF YOU)

When I started telling people about my blog, one of the first questions was,

“Have you gotten negative comments?

Have there been mean comments? Met any trolls?

Anyone say shit about you?”

And my answer is YES. Obviously.

But there are two categories: comments that are actually thought provoking and/or helpful AND comments that are intentionally hurtful.

The ones that are actually helpful are easy to address.

For instance, I had someone correct me on the translation of oil fried rail and oil fried ghost.

Another person directed me to some articles to help give me context to what I was writing about.

The ones that are just intentionally hurtful.

Here is a couple that I got from my HuffPost article.

What did I do at that moment?

I locked my phone and took a moment to digest that information.

This was the first time I had someone write that about me.

They were pinching my values.

But then like as quickly as I locked that phone, my empathy skills activated.

That is THEIR opinion. And that opinion’s predicated on their experiences, their views on the world and their lack of acceptance must make it really hard to be them.

Change happens all the time.

The world is made up of so many different people and I would hate to be in this person’s position, always fearful of things that don’t fit in their definition of what is appropriate.

So my golden rule is:

Respect other peoples’ opinions but don’t always value them.

Everyone’s a judge. Everyone’s going to have an opinion of you.

Judging others is a natural function of humans; we inherited it from our ancestors to observe, assess, form opinions as a way to filter out, non-likeminded individuals.

Back in the day, assimilation was the key to survival and this is  threatened when there is unfamiliarity

That part of our instincts is still there so we judge.

And we will always judge one another.

But the most important and the one judge you absolutely have to listen to is the one in your head.

Because it will determine where you will go in life, whether you will achieve what’s in your mind, and fulfill the needs of the heart.

We are our own worst critic. We see our own flaws before anyone else.

Let’s change it to “We are our own most crucial critic”.

The opinions we have of ourselves is what drives our self-esteem, our self-awareness, our confidence, our capacity to love to show compassion and be vulnerable.

Did you find this helpful?

Let me know in the comments below 🙂