How to Deal with Haters

Tune in or read the blog version below!

Hello my loves! Ragz and I are in our second week here in Puerto Escondido in Mexico, and we are currently deciding how long we want to stay here for.

The beach town, the beach vibes, we are in love. The water is really warm, like surfing in a bikini. The surf is amazing for all different levels.

Puerto Escondido is known for this one beach called Zicatela, known as the Mexican pipeline. And it’s actually like one of the main reasons we decided to come here.

Around Zicatela, there are also perfect beaches for beginners and intermediate surfers.

Let’s get started with this week’s episode, How to Deal With Haters. I really want to shed light onto the situation because it is so common people come to me all the time being like, “I am afraid of all the nasty comments I will get.

If I put myself out there, the hate messages, I don’t want to confront any of my family, friends, coworkers, because of this fear that they’re going to hate on me or like haters on the internet will.”

A lot of people have these fears and they don’t voice it necessarily to everyone around them. And so if someone new is trying to start something and they have these internal fears, they’re like, oh my God, all of these strangers, they’re not going to end up producing the content that’s necessary to create a name and a brand and a business for themselves.

So I really want to talk about this, talk about the common fears and essentially bring to light that most of it is in your head.

I will share my journey with how I was able to deal with haters and give you some tips to confront the if and when it ever happens to you, as well as a mini reality check at the end of this episode.

Fear Of Being Seen

In the beginning, when I first had my idea to become a travel influencer and go in front of the camera and start showing my face – you guys know that The Wanderlover started off as a features only page where I wasn’t creating my own content.

When I had the idea to start a blog about my travels, about my experiences, as well as share my photos and me posing in front of the camera on Instagram, I was so afraid to tell my coworkers about my new page, especially because in corporate.

I had a private Instagram, no one knew about The Wanderlover. I didn’t want to basically tell them that this was like my new direction, because I had no idea if it was going to be successful or not.

So that was one of my biggest fears: the haters which…who were basically my coworkers. So those were the first like category of haters I was afraid to confront.

Then the second group were internet trolls who would leave nasty comments, or I just couldn’t fathom the idea of people just being mean to me on the internet.

And this came in the form of like comments on my photos, comments on YouTube, and just people, you know, when you see all the main people on YouTube and you’re like, ah, I don’t want those comments on my episode.

Then my third biggest- group of haters that I didn’t ever want to come in contact with came in the form of hate messages.

So it was more like an account to me one-on-one expressing how just, I don’t know, how disappointed they are. I don’t even know what they would say, but my imagination was just like, I don’t want to get emails. I don’t want to get DMs from people who just say really mean things.

And I would take it really personally. And I just want to say that all of these fears are normal, but what I’m really grateful for are my mentors who pushed me through it and made me realize that it’s always going to serve you better if you take action regardless of these fears.

You Can’t Please Everybody

I’m so grateful that I was still able to produce content consistently and not let this fear dictate whether or not I put ideas out into this world.

And over time, what I learned is not everyone is going to like your work in this world. That’s just a given. You can’t satisfy a a hundred percent of people. And so focusing on that minute percentage of people who may or may not like your work and even if they don’t like it, may or may not confront you about it, that’s just not worth your time and energy.

If you think about it, like the most successful creatives and entrepreneurs like Vincent Van Gogh, Beyonce, Gary Vaynerchuk, they all have haters.

It just shows that you can be so perfect in what you’re doing, and still people will choose to either not receive your message or just look at it critically and give you shit for it. And that’s out of your control.

Like there’s just nothing that you can, should, or need to worry about because you can’t prevent it. And so I want you to think about your dreams and your goals and your business, like the political election going on right now.

I personally don’t watch the news very often. I believe it puts me in a state where I’m just unproductive and upset at the world going on.

It gets me very disempowered. I won’t say that I never watched the news. Ragz loves the news. And so I feel like I’m always updated.

But what I think is the most fascinating is every time someone voices their opinion…It can be someone who there’s a lot of uncertainty about their dreams, but they will be so gung-ho about their political views, which I find fascinating, because essentially you basically just need to fixate on your dreams… like the political election and who you believe is the best candidate.

Because when you take a stand and push for the agenda you want to see in your future and defend your candidate, it shows that you are willing to take a stand and put yourself out there even when half the nation is against you.

They want to stay hating, but they have a different perspective, right? They have a different opinion on your views and they’re not necessarily haters, but it’s just, again, the given fact that not everyone is going to support your decision.

It’s impossible to satisfy a hundred percent of the people. And if you look around and see everyone like taking a stand for what they believe their future for should more or less look like, adopt that same mentality into your business.

Don’t Take Things Personally

Like take that stand, make that decision, believe in yourself and your abilities as much as a politica candidate, which in the grand scheme of things like you have more control over what you do with your business than the election.

And that is totally not to say that your vote isn’t important, and this is actually the perfect episode to remind all of you, if you are American and you haven’t voted yet, please go vote. It is such a privilege.

I was able to mail in my absentee ballot before I got to Mexico. And even that, like not having to physically be at the polling place was a luxury to me and I am so grateful for it.

And so I highly urge you guys, if you have the ability to go vote in this election.

Most Fears Are In Your Head

Okay. In the first part of this episode, we talked about the fears that I had going into showing my face and being a quote unquote, like a public figure on social media and as well as like the underlying, just fact that not everyone is going to like your work and there are going to be haters out there.

But I want to share what actually happened and what came to fruition from the fears that I had and from this underlying fact, like all coming together.

99% of the time, it’s all in your head.

So these worst case scenarios of my coworkers hating on me or getting nasty comments and getting hate messages… Like 99% of the time in the past, like a few years, right, it was all in my head.

And for every one nasty comment I got, I got 99 supportive, like valuable, just new fans raving about my work.

That’s not to say that it’s not going to happen, that you’re not going to ever get someone who dislikes your work or disapproves or whatever, you know, but the thing is, you’re not looking at the 99 and that’s what you need to focus on.

Because if you’re so fixated on what could possibly go wrong this 1% of the time, and that’s what stops you from producing life changing content or life-changing businesses then are you really on a mission to change lives and be the entrepreneur that you were meant to be?

Or are you just going to hide behind your fears and take the safe route? And if I were to break down my fears that I had, the first being telling my coworkers, I actually received zero negativity from my coworkers.

They were all surprisingly, super supportive, at least to my face. I’m sure there’s like conversations that I don’t know about where people weren’t the most confident in my decision to quit my corporate job at the bank, but that’s okay.

Like it’s bound to happen. It’s guaranteed to happen, but no one ever told me about it. And I don’t know, that fear just never manifested itself.

My First Nasty Comment

The next was nasty comments and hate messages. I get them very, very occasionally. The first time was when I started running ads to my first opt-in, which was a travelpreneur checklist, so a checklist of whether or not this traveling entrepreneurship lifestyle is right for you.

Someone commented and was like, this is so stupid. And I remember seeing that comment just from a stranger, you know – that really affected me because I worked really hard on this opt-in and there was someone I didn’t even know who basically told me that my opt-in was shit.

And in the beginning I was like, who is this person, I wanted to delete the comment. I just wanted to like, just take my opt-in off of my website because this one person has said it was stupid.

It completely just made me feel horrible about what I had created and shared and ran ads to for the first time, right?

Back then it really affected me. But over time, I, when I look back on that like one comment… It’s so insignificant and in the grand scheme of The Wanderlover, like, that person had no impact on my business whatsoever.

Now, like, I am more confident in taking stands for things and putting things out there, despite what people may think, because it’s not about them. It’s about me and my business and my clients and customers who I help and anyone coming in and trying to take that away from me – they’re not able to.

So over time resilience is what has improved significantly to the point where like, if anyone were to comment something like that, I can hide it.

I can ignore it. It’s so easy for me to get over it.

But back then, before I even started any of this, even the thought of someone saying, “Oh, this is stupid.” That would have taken such a huge hit on my confidence. So for every one of these quote unquote nasty comments I’ve got, I’ve also gotten thousands and thousands of supportive comments, right?

And this really shows that when you put stuff out there into the world, and it shows you are an expert, you are creating assets and tangible things that you can see that you have produced and are sharing to the world and you are standing for something and that causes other people to disagree with you in that is completely, you know, okay.

Building Resilience

It’s also taught me so much resilience, right. Especially with being a travel influencer. And I’ve noticed this in the past few years, I just brushed it aside, I don’t even care anymore.

But I remember when I first like told the world and started telling people that I was a travel influencer and launching The Travel Influencer Handbook, I got so many comments. Just mostly not- I don’t think anything negative per se, but people just had this negative association with travel influencers.

I’ve gotten a few comments where it was, I think, a misunderstanding, but people truly think that travel influencers don’t work… that they just get freebies and don’t really put any effort behind it and their content and social media and Instagram aren’t viable options to make a living, which is not true.

And if they’ve grown up in a society where it’s very traditional, you go into an office, there’s no, there’s no really vacation outside of your allotted vacation days a year, I can see how just solely working online may seem like a scam or just something that they’re not familiar with.

So a lot of the times I think it was a misunderstanding, but I have like, you know, read articles and just spoken to people who didn’t appreciate travel influencers.

And that’s okay. And that’s their opinion.

But if you have your own business and you’re able to work and travel the world from it and reach other people who understand what you are going through and what you are saying, then sharing that makes it so much more valuable than focusing on the people who don’t understand.

Criticism Only From Those Below You

Something I’ve noticed from the past few years of being a full-time entrepreneur is you will never be criticized by someone doing more than you are. If not, all of your criticism is going to be from people who are on a different path, who are not even producing any content or creating a business for themselves and know nothing about entrepreneurship.

They’re just basically behind your back or gossiping, or trying to take you off this path, because A) they may genuinely just not have a clue of what’s entailed or B) they want to knock you off their pedestal to make them feel better about themselves.

So it’s more about like a self-confidence and a self worth issue than your own actual business, right?

And if you find the people who are a few steps ahead of you, I guarantee they will be nothing but supportive because they’ve been through it. They know what it’s like to just start out.

Only the people who don’t understand, who are maybe jealous, who are insecure – only those people are going to like, they’re going to be the ones leaving those nasty comments and sending hate messages.

If you think about it that way, there’s nothing for you to worry about because it’s just insignificant to your overall purpose.

If and when you do get a nasty comment, assess whether it is from a place of misunderstanding and if they genuinely have good intentions. And with those people you may want to start a dialogue.

What To Do With Haters

If you choose, you always have the choice to, you can direct them to a resource or explain some things if you think that they would be open and receptive to it.

However, if they are truly a troll and they’re just doing it for the sake of, I don’t know, leaving a message in the comments, just ignore it or delete it, right?

There’s really not much else to it. You don’t have to choose to take it personally. You don’t have to choose to allow it to affect your mood and affect the direction in which you run your business.

Because I guarantee you, those people compared to who your true tribe and your clients and your customers are, right – those people are just insignificant and not even worth it.

So my tip and my challenge for you this week is to measure your success by actually how many people criticize your work. I want you to actually get it as a metric: how many people notice and criticized your work.

In order to have criticism, you must be visible. No one can criticize you if you’re not putting yourself out there.

So I want to first help you realize that by putting yourself out there and giving room to this criticism, that’s already a major win. Because it’s already far ahead of those people who just sit behind their laptops and do nothing about their current situation.

So first commend yourself for putting yourself out there, for taking a stand, for showcasing your talents and expertise, and pat yourself on the back for it, right?

Because you’re getting noticed. And so if you are going to take the measurement of how many people criticize your work, you’re only going to be more incentivized to create content every day.

Inevitably as you’re producing more work and more people are noticing who you are they’re going to have more to say about it. And let’s say a number of criticisms goes from one to two over the span of three months.

I guarantee you in that span, you will also get a thousand praises. So if you really want to focus on nasty comments and on nasty messages and make that like the bane of your business, I want you to focus on them and turn it into something that you are excited to collect because that just means your business is growing and you’re going to be the next Van Gogh, the next Beyonce, the next Gary Vaynerchuk – it’s inevitable and it should be your fuel to move forward.

Conclusion

So I hope this was really helpful. I really hope that it brought light to some of your fears and insecurities, but also made you realize that you have the power and the choice to change your mindset and how you view those fears and insecurities.

Of course the whole mission is to take action every single day to living a life that you’ve always dreamed of. So don’t hide behind those fears and instead take inspired action.

Thank you guys so much for listening. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast and enjoyed this episode, please, don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review.

Have an amazing week guys. And I’ll see you in the next episode!

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, it would mean so much if you could leave a review on Apple Podcasts. This helps us spread The Wanderlover mission to those who need a dose of inspiration today, thank you!

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