How To Deal With Haters

One week they hate you, the next week they love you. Get paid both weeks.

Sometimes you will put your heart and soul into building, doing and creating something just to end up getting people hating. 

Hate comments are responses to what you do with malicious intent. It’s an attempt to make you feel less than so someone else feels superior.

Having haters sucks, but it’s part of life.

I believe that most of us have negative people in our lives, and you've probably experienced that as well. 

No matter how well your social interactions go, how much you accomplish, or how much good you put into the world, you will always have haters. An unfortunate aspect of life is that some people hate when others do well.

It’s just a way of life.

The fact is that if you're on a path to success… you're going to encounter critics, haters, and naysayers along the way.

In this article, I'm going to show you how to effectively deal with these individuals. 

What is a hater?

Before you can understand how to deal with haters, it's important to understand exactly what a hater is. 

A hater is a person who has difficulty finding happiness in the success of other people. 

Haters will be very happy when a successful person makes a mistake or stumbles. 

Haters are generally more concerned about downplaying or criticising other people than focusing on their own success.

A hater is someone who discredits, devalues or downplays your accomplishments.

It doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t matter if you do nothing. Someone is going to say something negative about you. 

You can’t do anything about these people. All you can do is give them something worth talking about.

These types of people are fuelled by jealousy and contempt. Your failures make them happier than their own success. To them, everything is a zero-sum game and they only see scarcity and limitation.

Why do people become haters?

There are a few common reasons that some people turn out this way. They include:

- Insecurity 

- They've failed at something you are succeeding in 

- Abandonment issues 

- You've passed their expectations of you 

- Attention

- Jealousy

- Envy 

Envy Attacks

Haters will throw envy attacks at you all the time. 

Envy is an emotion that is unconscious in most people, but it can come from being focused on other people’s successes and wanting to bring them down because of it. 

When you get an envy attack, you’ll pretty much feel really bad about yourself, but without knowing why. 

What are the different types of envy attacks? 

- Throwing shade and disrespect at you in the form of "Jokes"

- Causing you to doubt yourself 

- Enjoying your fuck ups

- Subtly trying to "humble" you 

- Undermining your opinions so you begin to doubt yourself.

- Generally just making you feel bad about yourself.

Learn to control your anger.

This is a lot easier said than done.

Controlling your anger is also a great challenge in life. People might say things to you that invoke high levels of anger for loads of different reasons. 

If you can stay composed in these high-pressure or anxiety-provoking situations, then you will learn to control your anger. 

Doing so will pay off countless times throughout life. Trust me on this.

As an entrepreneur, you work hard to build a reputation of integrity and trust. 

You understand that people do business with someone they know, like and trust, so you make it your goal to do business in that way. 

You keep your promises and you over-deliver with your products and services.

Attacks on your business and reputation are bound to happen, especially as you grow. 

Jealousy, envy and other emotions can enter people's mind and cause them to want to damage your business and attack your reputation.

This is one I have to deal with quite a few times over the past 8 months. A lot of people have tried to ruin what I've got going on.

and this is a very tricky situation to navigate around, because most people will tell you to "ignore the hate"

But when you leave false rumours and allegations unchecked, your clients, followers and customers could start believing what's not true. 

For a while, I thought I would stay quiet and let my reputation speak for itself. It's taken some time to realise that's not enough and not proactive. 

Theres been times I've personally and directly called out every single nerd who made up these BS statements, and they never have the guts to respond or say it to my face.

Should you do this? No 

and it's something I will no longer do going forward. 

But I want to make it very clear that your online reputation matters a lot.

Your online reputation is critical to success in the business world today. 

If you're doing very well, some people WILL try to ruin it, however, do what you can to keep your reputation and your image clean.

If some people believe false lies, let them.

Sometimes people won't like you but they are looking for reasons to justify not liking you and all it may take is for them to hear 3% of a story, or a false allegation to justify why they never liked you in the beginning.

If you focus on the criticism and negativity, your creativity might get blocked by anger and self-doubt, which will distract you from your goals.

People will hate you because you have improved your life

Maybe you used to be one who had nothing going on for you, now all of a sudden your heading towards a brighter future.

Everyone wants the good life. Few people are willing to do the work necessary to get a good life.

Everybody wants to be great, but not everyone is willing to pay the price.

Greatness comes at a cost, it does not just come in the platters of gold. And, until you pay the price of greatness you cannot become great.

If you want a bunch of friends, be unsuccessful.

Rather than elevate themselves to your level, haters would rather waste time trying to drag you down to their level. The quickest way to get haters is to succeed.

 Jealousy: People want what you have

Your improvement may bother people who are used to you existing below their level.

Jealousy is usually very easy to spot. You just notice the weird vibe someone is giving off and know when someone is jealous of you

When someone feels inferior or slighted, they will express their feelings in the form of jealousy or hate. 

These feelings can cause uncomfortable situations and make you feel bad for your success.

If someone is jealous of you, it probably means they see something in you that they couldn’t achieve or become.

It could be the smallest of things that could make the other person feel inadequate because they might have some insecurities in that area of life or might have self-esteem issues, even though they might portray themselves as confident.

Sometimes certain things indirectly trigger people’s insecurities and weak spots. 

And in trying to overcome that, they will take on a defensive approach to show their worth, or worse an offensive approach to downplay the other person.

Very ever so rarely will someone doing better than you will hate .... but it does happen....very every so rarely.

Sometimes even the people who are apparently doing much better than you, would feel jealous of your achievements or just simply feel insecure by your progress.

They see the potential in you and might feel threatened by your progress and growth and feel that you might get ahead of them in the near future.

Always remember this, no one is hating on the people who are on the side of the roads begging for money.

People are too busy hating on the guy or girl flying first class or even flying private.

Jealousy, hate and envy is usually an indication of growth, progression and success.

The next type of haters: Internet haters

These people are a SPECIAL kind of haters. 

Any time you try to produce anything of value, internet trolls are quick to give you negative feedback.

Social media has given a safe space for WAYYYY tooo many people to be talking CRAZY without any severe consequences for their words.

"Social media made y'all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it."

- Mike Tyson

These are people who thrive of saying things online because they know nothing will happen to them. 

sometimes our ego is what destroys us. 

We will get 97 messages full of support, encouragement, praise and love but then we want to let all hell break loose because of the 3 negative comments and statements we received. 

One thing I've stopped doing is focusing on the negatives because I have realised that most people who love your work will not comment on it and will just continue to support you in silence whilst the haters are the ones who are extremely vocal.

Also, another thing I've understood is that majority of these little weasels will NEVER say it to your face 🙂

The craziest part is that these people will continue to watch and consume EVERYTHING you are doing. They will never go away.

So it's just something you'll have to take on the chin when it happens.

"When you're the gladiator in the Arena, the spectators will talk. Accept it and perform."

- Chambers Jr

How to respond to haters?

Do not "kill them with kindness"

Do not offer to meet them and fight 1-1 

Do not "turn the cheek" 

Here are your options:

1. Continue winning. This REALLY annoys them. It burns them on the inside.

2. If it's online, you can block them. This is a hit or miss as sometimes they can make new accounts just to continue hating.

3. Totally ignore them. This will require a very high level of patience 

4. If you’re bored, you can harass them. If you’ve got nothing better to do, they’re great fun to make fun of. But I don’t recommend wasting your time or energy on these people because it will also drag you down and can make you look unprofessional to the people who are watching and following you. 

Always remember that for every 1 person who doesn't like you there are 100 who are supporting you and everything you do even if they're not being vocal about it.

You can worry and obsess over the criticism or you can move on and do what you love to do

"When you're the gladiator in the Arena, the spectators will talk. Accept it and perform."

- Chambers Jr

Conclusion 

Over the years, I've come to realise that if you stand out in some way, having haters is bound to happen. 

There are people out there who will show you love, encouragement and support however, there are just as many who are quick to judge, make assumptions and project their pains & failures onto other people. But that's just how the world is.

If you're excelling in your respective field, there a re people who will atomically decide to hate you because your success makes them uncomfortable and they'd have a very closed mind to doing what it takes to better themselves.

A way that's helped me accept this truth is that I've looked at every single person I admire and respect. I've come to realise they also have a bunch of bums hating on them too. 

This is an ugly part of excelling in life, that we must accept if we want reach certain heights.

- Till next time