Haters

One of the most important life lessons I’ve ever learned is you can fit in, or you can stand out. You can’t do both. The moment you decide to start improving your life you’re going to start attracting haters.

A lot of people will get offended when they see you making positive changes in your life because it makes them look bad. These people will attempt to bring you down to their level in order to preserve their ego. They’ll tell you you’re being unrealistic and that you should just give up because you’ll never amount to anything.

Don’t worry about them though. It’s unintelligent to focus on what the haters are saying for two reasons.

1. Basing your self-worth on the words of others is stupid because it’s a variable entirely out of your control. Understand that you can’t be everything to everybody. Stop worrying about what other people think. Focus on your actions rather than their reactions.
2. You know yourself better than anyone else. Nobody can estimate the heights you’re capable reaching more accurately than you. If you have a goal that resonates with every cell of your body and you know you can achieve it, that’s all that matters. Everything else is irrelevant.

Another problem with haters is people tend to focus on them too much. I see a lot of people attempting to do something not because they care or are passionate about it, but simply because they want to prove the haters wrong. What are the problems with that you ask?

1. If you’re not passionate about a goal you should make a new one. If you’re not willing to do whatever it takes to reach your current goal you’re probably not going to achieve it. Even if you’re able to accomplish your goal, however, if you’re not passionate about it, reaching it will be unsatisfying and won’t matter to you.
2. Even if you’re passionate about a goal BECAUSE of the haters, it’s still stupid to pursue a goal for that purpose. For one, drawing satisfaction from proving others wrong is the result of misaligned values. Even if you disagree with that statement, however, proving the haters wrong is still a fruitless endeavor because by the time you reach “x” goal, the haters will have already forgotten about you and moved onto something new to trash talk.

I’m going to conclude here with a little analogy (in my own words) I heard from Eric Thomas.

Haters are like mouse traps. All the mice understand that they’re deadly, but sometimes they get too caught up in the cheese, and then Snaaap! They get caught, and they don’t realize it until it’s too late.

Don’t get caught up in the cheese, or you’re going to fall into the trap too. Let the haters talk, let them set their traps. As long as you focus on yourself and refuse to get caught up in the cheese you have nothing to worry about.

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