How to deal with HATERS: understanding the nature of the problem

As soon as you make the decision to stand up, stop hiding,

and show the world who you are and what you believe,

you will start to cast a shadow.

One of the costs associated with becoming somebody

is that you will attract opposition.

Because we live in a world of duality, everything under the sun

has an antithetical element.

No matter how good, right, and correct you believe yourself to be,

there will be people who disagree with you.

Depending on their level of awareness,

they may attempt to criticize, denounce, ostracize, and destroy you.

The brightest lights throughout history have often been fringed

with the most profound darknesses,

and if you dare to stand up, attracting haters is unavoidable.

The True Nature of a Hater

Haters are people who are loudly negative with respect to who

they think you are and what they believe you believe.

In most cases, haters almost never carry an accurate

conceptualization of your actual arguments and beliefs.

Instead, they maintain warped, straw-man substitutes

created through selective attention to evidence

that supports their distortion and selective inattention

to evidence that disconfirms it.

They rarely possess a measured and comprehensive understanding

of your position and seem very personally

invested in proving you wrong.

Generally, this happens because your very existence as someone

who has stood up acts as the shadow to someone who

has remained in hiding.

You represent parts of themselves that they have

not allowed themselves to accept and integrate.

These parts are denied, disavowed, and projected onto others.

Haters then try to purify themselves by purging the world

of the darkness they have projected onto you,

which creates an incomprehensible amount

of unnecessary suffering.

Hating is Actually Envy

David Goggins once said,

“You will never meet a hater doing better than you.”

To understand why this is true, it is important to recognize

that hating isn’t so much about hate as it is about envy.

Envy is a complicated and insidious emotion.

To experience envy, a person must perceive a deficit

with respect to a self-relevant good relative to a perceived equal.

It is entirely about how you choose to look at things.

The most critical component of this is that envy can only

exist relative to a perceived equal.

If you take away that part, you don’t have envy;

you have admiration.

But if a person believes that a perceived equal shouldn’t

be doing much better than them—especially if it relates

to their identity—they are going to feel envy.

Why Your Biggest Hater is Often Someone Close to You

The greater the perceived equality,

the easier it is for envy to fluoresce.

This is why your biggest hater is often someone you know,

likely someone very close to you.

Because of the perceived equality criterion,

the greatest potential for envy always exists

among peer-aged friends and siblings.

This dynamic is why Cain killed Abel.

If Abel weren’t Cain’s little brother, God’s preference for

Abel’s sacrifice wouldn’t have hurt quite so much.

Envy is more prevalent in families and among peers because,

in those circles, you are “just my friend,”

“just my brother,” or “just my spouse.”

You are not seen as special;

you are seen as someone who exists relative to them.

As Jesus said, “Only in his hometown, among his relatives,

and in his own house is a prophet without honor.”

Finding Your True Community

The good that you do is generally recognized

by people outside of your immediate family and friend group,

where that recognition will not be experienced

as a personally threatening narcissistic injury.

This is why your biggest fan is probably someone you haven’t met yet,

and why you should take the risk to stand up

so that people can recognize you from afar.

When people start to stand up and are not supported

or are even chastised by the ten or twenty people closest to them,

they often mistakenly believe they have nothing of value to give.

In reality, their value may simply be ignored or discounted

because it threatens other people’s egocentrism or vanity.

You should set your sights outside the little circles

you entered by the accident of birth or circumstance.

Put your value out into the world

and attract the people who resonate on your frequency.

That is your real community.

How to Effectively Deal with Haters

• No Response: The best response to haters is no response. Engagement—whether it is defending your position, debating their criticism, or responding in kind—is generally reinforcing. Just like children who prefer negative attention over no attention at all, engaging with haters gives them what they want.
• A Non-Reinforcing Response: If you are somehow required to respond, the second-best approach is a non-reinforcing response. This is as close to a truly neutral response as you can muster, displaying no expression and no emotion. It suggests that there was nothing in the hater’s communication that made enough sense to even perceive it as requiring a response. By communicating in a way that expresses no harm was experienced, you disarm the hater. Most haters won’t try that tactic again once they realize it cannot achieve their desired result.