Throughout this year, several bloggers will engage in a conversation here and on their blogs — asking questions of each other and responding. Others are absolutely welcome to join the conversation, as well. Learn more about the ladies of Blogversation 2012.
Today’s question comes from Lesley Ware, www.thecreativecookie.net.
On Twitter, Lesley is @creativecookie.
How do you deal with the haters?
I’ve been encountering a handful of people who I’m going to unfortunately have to describe as ‘haters’. According to the Urban Dictionary a hater is:
A person that simply cannot be happy for another person’s success. So rather than be happy they make a point of exposing a flaw in that person.
Hating is different from jealousy because it’s usually involves spreading negative energy around a person’s accomplishments. In essence, haters do not want to be the person that they are hating on.
P. Diddy was the first rapper that I remember use this term in one of his songs around the late ’90s. I was perplexed at the time by the notion of hating, Why would someone hate? What is gained by hating?
After being on the receiving end of some recent “haterism” I totally get were Diddy was coming from when he sang, “You can hate me now, but I won’t stop, You can hate me now, but I won’t stop now…”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdf-kIvOag4]
On that note, how do you deal with the haters in your professional or personal life? Do you love them, tune them out, or simply keep making moves? Where do you see them in the spectrum — are they insecure or could they be the ultimate fan?
4 Comments
Maryann
Wrap them in kindness. Haters often have a lot of insecurity about themselves. They cover it up or try to make themselves feel better about themselves by knocking others down. Remember the source, don’t take their words to heart, but be kind to them from your heart – just as you would anyone hurting.
Colleen Newvine Tebeau
Wise observation, Maryann. When someone’s being cruel, it’s easy to take it personally — but sometimes useful to take a step back and to see it as not about you but about the person doing the hating.
When I was dealing with one aggressive, combative person, I watched and realized he wasn’t just directly that venom toward me. It was the way he interacted with the world.
Then I found it helpful to picture him as a dog tied up on a front porch, barking and growling as a way of dealing with his fear.
(http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/chaining_tethering/tips/do_you_chain_your_dog.html)
With that mental picture, I treated him as I would a growling dog chained up to a porch: I gave him some distance, talked in a calm voice to reassure him and to not show fear, and remembered that his growling wasn’t about me.
Once that became instinctive, then I moved on to not letting him become the alpha dog purely because he was barking the loudest. If I had to bark, too, to be heard, I would.
Eleanor
My first thought here: Haters are looking for something. Sometimes, hating is the only way someone can figure out to make contact with another person. They don’t know anything else. Hating can come from a real sense of disconnection, so this is how the hater is going to attempt to connect. An interesting experiment is to make friendly connection back in that person’s direction – similar to Maryann’s idea. Or just ignore them altogether.
Okay, on a personal note: Why in the heck would anyone hate on someone as awesome as Lesley Ware a/k/a Creative Cookie? Nothing to hate there. NOTHING!!!
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