People dislike what you do for no apparent reason? Consider this.
People dislike what you do for no apparent reason? Consider this.
Before we get into it, I want to make one thing very clear. How other people feel about you says generally a lot more about themselves. Remember, you’re the side character in everyone else’s story, so move your cute ass off that high horse.
Now that we all established that we’re essentially irrelevant, let’s get to it.
As you may have noticed, I added “for no apparent reason” in the title, since this blog focuses on the unsubstantiated dislike that’s directed towards you. If you actively write hate comments on the internet and/or bully people for following their dreams, congratulations, you’re an idiot and deserve the backlash.
It’s interesting how many of us know the feeling of stepping into a room and having a sense that the people in there just talked shit behind our back, or how we’re sitting on a train, minding our business and someone is immensely triggered by our existence. Similar things may happen when we’re at work or school, really proud of what we put together, but our supervisor just hates every bit of it. It seems like, no matter what we change, they’ll hate it. This gets especially frustrating when you’re changing something according to their liking, and they still hate it, better yet, suggest you change it again to the very thing you had before. If this never happened to you, I am delighted that you cannot relate. It is hella frustrating, LET ME TELL YOU.
This kind of mind-fuckery is not only annoying, over time you start to question every cell of your existence. You lose trust in yourself, in your ability and your overall intelligence. To put it mildly, that’s a disservice to yourself.
There’s a lot to cover here. Before I ramble on, though, if there’s one thing I want you to remember after reading this post, let it be this: Don’t doubt yourself. You are capable and yes, I love you.
Ok, let’s get into this.
Feedback does not equate feedback
Before you jump on that downward spiral after someone gave you a weird look, insulted your existence or made you question your sanity, please consider this first. Who gave you that feedback/reaction? Is it a stranger that just wants to insult you? Easy, f*ck them. Is it a friend? Ok, more complicated. You might want to hear them out. Maybe they give you a side-eye to quietly tell you your nipple is freed in a public space. Also, bear in mind that you generally want people around you that can give you that uncomfortable truth, but CONTEXT matters. Usually, a good way to tell if the people around you are genuine friends is how they react when you share good news - or bad news for that matter - with them. It’s as simple as that. I think the following quote of Jordan Peterson is quite fitting:
“Here's how you can tell someone is your friend: A) You can tell them bad news, and they'll listen. B) You can tell them good news, and they'll help you celebrate.”
Whether it’s a stranger, a friend, a supervisor or a family member, the second thing to look at is the content of the received feedback. Even if all your feedback stems from strangers, if all of them tell you the same thing, you might want to look at it. This holds true, for example, if you’re sharing your art online and people within the field give you feedback that helps you level-up your skills. Another good example could be your dating life. If all the people you were dating come to the same conclusion about a specific behavior of yours, guess what babygirl, they might be onto something. Take it with a grain of salt, though. Timing and context matters here as well, as a break-up conversation is usually heavily focused on all the things that went wrong.
In short: Consider the messenger AND the message.
The message is never objective
After you established that the messengers have their best interest at heart and that the message is being given with a certain reasoning, the second thing to look at is how the message is influenced. I might lose some of you here, but I believe that objectivity is an impossible state for humans, as our very existence is rooted in subjectivity. Even if other people are not emotionally involved in your action, the way they perceive things is always filtered through their own lens of existence. Let’s say you want to start a new business and your friend advises you not to invest all your money in your idea and instead stay in that soul-sucking job for the sake of financial security. Maybe they have tried the same thing in the past, failed and lost all their money, so they genuinely want to protect you from making the same mistake. In this example, the messenger is a good friend and the message is a genuine one. However, the feedback is so heavily influenced by their own negative experience with starting a new business, that it doesn’t really serve you at all.
It’s not surprising that many successful people will tell you to surround yourself with individuals who already do the very thing you’re trying to learn or become better at. These people all still walk around with their filters, but they are usually more likely to provide you with valuable information tailored to your current situation, which is not heavily diluted with past negative/unrelated experience.
Take note of the environment you’re in
Probably one of my favorite analogies to describe this is the elephant and his monkey squad. The elephant being you in this scenario (I’m not body-shaming here). Imagine all you witness all day long is your monkey friends climbing trees, opening bananas, rolling around and picking their noses. What’s normal and easy for them is very hard if not impossible for you to do. What happens over time is you naturally start to question yourself. At the same time, since all you do is surround yourself with monkeys, you don’t recognize your own talents and gifts that make you unique. Moral of that story - mind your environment. If your gut feeling is telling you, you don’t belong somewhere, it might be worthwhile to pay attention to that feeling. Maybe you just haven’t found the right environment to fully be yourself and get appreciated for who you truly are. After all, if a plant doesn’t grow the way you want to, you usually change the environment and not blame the plant, unless you’re the same idiot I called out in the beginning.
Last but not least, just do your thing
We talked a lot about external feedback and how important it is that we try to distinguish the kind of feedback we receive. Also, please don’t forget that you’ll never get a perfect 10. There’s no way you can please the mass without a single soul shitting on absolutely everything you do. With all of this being said, I think it’s important that we go out there, wear the things we want, start that passion project, be cringe, do our best, share our thoughts, stay true to ourselves and just do our thing. Not to mention, the added excitement you get from simply going for it and overcoming your fear of sharing.
