During your blogging journey, you have encountered people who hate on your work either because they don’t agree with your opinion or they just woke up one morning and decided to take out their anger on you because something is not going on well in their life. Some may just be genuinely correcting you. Whatever it is, your blogging journey will not be smooth sailing. Along the way, you will encounter someone who criticizes you to make you better, while others just do it to bring you down. Others have nothing better to do.
Depending on their approach, you will want to run and hide, slap someone silly because you just about had enough, stop blogging altogether or hug and thank them.
When this happens I remember what Rihanna says in her song Cheers, Drink To That. She says, “Life is too short to just sit around miserable, and people are gonna talk whether you are doing bad or good.”
And, yes, I quote Rihanna. She makes sense…sometimes.
What you need to understand is that critics will always be there. There is someone out there who will always see a half-empty glass. Don’t blame them, it’s just who they are. You can’t change them. What you can change, however, is your general outlook towards life and develop ways in which you can handle such people.
- It’s never that serious
Sometimes, the its-never-that-serious-shield works wonders. Understand it is their opinion, not yours. If it is yours, you can frame it however you want it to be. We humans can never agree on everything. When it reaches that point, let them be and move on.
- No one is right, no one is wrong
Speaking of opinions, it is yours, no one can take it away from you. People who criticize have their own opinions too. Whatever you write is your own version of the truth. They have own version. And that is okay. The problem comes in when they think they are better than everyone else. Fact is, no one is perfect. Even you.
- Let something good come out of it
Use the criticism to your advantage, like writing a post about haters and trolls and how to deal with them. (Not that I encountered haters or anything like that) You might help someone else too. People being haters is not your problem, it’s theirs. Did you die, when they trolled you? No! You are doing something great. Keep it up. Every day is a learning process.
- Don’t let negativity kill your creativity
Don’t quit because one person didn’t like your work. If everyone quit because of it, we wouldn’t have great people in the world. Remember the story of Abraham Lincoln? Born into poverty, Lincoln was faced with defeat throughout his life. He lost eight elections, twice failed in business and suffered a nervous breakdown. He could have quit many times – but he didn’t and because he didn’t quit, he became one of the greatest presidents in history.
- Protect yourself
Take a break from reading those hateful comments on your site. Look at happy videos of cats and then come back later so you don’t miss constructive or useful feedback.
Have you had haters on your blog? How have you dealt with it?