Ways to Deal with Haters and Critics
Published February 1, 2022 | 7 min read
Let’s take a moment and learn how to deal with haters from one of the greatest basketball players of all time.
On September 25, 2015, at 6:41 A.M., LeBron James sent out a tweet that read:
Nice tweet, right? Nothing controversial or fancy about it, just some inspiration for his followers.
Though he received many positive responses from his fans, he also received some responses like these shown below.
Wow, that’s rough.
#haters
Haters and critics occupy every dark crevice of the online world, armed with their biting words and relentless motivation to put others down.
Now more than ever, it’s easy to hate on and criticize others, from comfort and safety behind a computer screen.
For some, hating is like a hobby.
Haters are like leeches.
They latch onto you and suck away your hard-earned life and energy, relentlessly feeding themselves before moving on to the next target.
Maybe you have some haters.
Maybe there are a few people out there who can’t stand you and always seem to look for reasons to disapprove of your behavior.
How are you supposed to deal with this?
I’m here to tell you that there are ways to deal with haters.
Like leeches, haters have weaknesses.
Use the following tips to pour some salt on those leeches in your life and keep them powerless over you.
Haters do not add value to the world, they try to subtract it
One of my favorite quotes about haters comes from one of the most criticized professional athletes of recent times- LeBron James.
After losing to the Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 NBA Finals, LeBron faced heavy criticism from his haters.
In his post-game press conference, he had this to say about them.
“At the end of the day, they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life they had before they woke up today.
Boom, what a powerful statement.
What he’s saying here is that yeah, haters are gonna hate, but their life is going to be no different from it was before.
They will not improve or change themselves, and they will add nothing valuable to the world—just an opinion that in the grand scheme of things, means very little.
It’s hard to find a hater that also contributes a lot to the world at the same time.
Those who live with a constructive mindset of love spend too much time figuring out how they can add to the world, and as a result, they have little time or energy left for hating.
It’s important to note that there is a big difference between “hating” and “constructive criticism”.
They can sound very similar and are often confused.
People who constructively criticize you are those who want to see you add something to the world, while people who hate on you are those who try to prevent you from adding something.
Haters find fulfillment in hating
In life, we all search for purpose.
We all search for that one thing that powers us out of bed in the morning.
Partaking in activities that fulfill us enriches our lives.
We crave that special-something that gives us that rush of feel-good chemicals consistently.
For some haters out there, they get that rush from hating on others.
They get high from feeling superior to other people, and this little addiction is the only way they know how to survive.
When you realize that haters hate because that’s what fulfills them, you can feel almost sorry for them.
They’ve lost a lot of power over you, simply because you have recognized that they feel good by making others feel bad.
That being said, hating on haters is not a good idea, and does nothing to decrease the amount of hate in the world.
Instead, why not try to understand these haters?
It’s important to realize that often their hating is nothing more than a jealousy of something cool you’re doing.
If so, then props to you.
Sometimes you have to take a step back and note the people that are hating.
Many of them are much less fortunate and are not truly where they want to be in life.
Hating is their coping mechanism, which is truly a sad thing.
Haters get uncomfortable when you raise your status
Haters get really uncomfortable when you try to raise your status.
They like things the way they are, and when you take time to improve yourself, you become an enormous threat to them.
Think of it this way.
Instead of trying to add something to the world by raising their own floor, they prefer to lower the floors of everyone around them.
This behavior adds nothing constructive to the world.
Haters have this scarcity mindset because they think the world is a zero-sum game.
This means that there is “only so much to go around” and that if someone wins, someone else absolutely must lose out.
Haters don’t like people elevating themselves because that means someone else has to lose out.
And that someone else is usually them.
Just because haters have a problem with your self-development doesn’t mean that you should slow down.
As long as you’re developing in a way that adds value to the world, you have nothing to be ashamed of.
Haters aren’t risk-takers, they are bystanders
Teddy Roosevelt, an incredible speaker and 26th President of the United States of America, has delivered some impressive words about haters.
In his speech Citizenship in a Republic, given in Paris, France in 1910, he stated that…
It is not the critic who counts… the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood… if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Those cold, timid souls that Teddy is referring to are the haters.
They don’t know what it’s like to succeed or fail spectacularly, and prefer the comfort of spectating and criticizing other people’s risk-taking efforts.
How a hater is born
Haters love the feeling of validating their existence by putting down people who have actually done things with themselves.
Again, hating on haters does nothing to stop the trend, so that’s not what I’m doing here.
The more you hate on others, the more likely you are to feel you’re being hated on.
If you want to be free to make yourself vulnerable and put yourself out there to do something great with your life, the best thing you can do is to stop hating on others.
In any endeavor you take on in your life, there comes a point when you must decide if you want to go out on a limb or not in order to reach that next step.
Going out on a limb is hard.
It puts you in a position where you will either become a great success or you will fail in a bigger way than you have ever failed before.
Haters can be hard to ignore.
When dealing with them, it’s important to remind yourself to keep things in perspective.
Nobody grows up wanting to be a hater.
Hating happens because of a life not completely lived.
When someone opens their mouth to hate on you, all they’re doing is vocalizing their displeasure in themselves because they haven’t done what they wanted to do.
Use these tips and ideas as your own personal salt packets that you can use to detach any leeches that stick to you.
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