I’m an author and online teacher. So, as you might have imagined I roam around the valleys of Facebook, YouTube & Instagram my whole day trying to teach people a thing or two everyday. Social media has given me everything that I have today. It would be impossible for me to reach out to millions of people everyday without the massive multiplier effect that I got through social media.
But there’s a problem, an unwanted gift, if we could call it that, that social media has bestowed upon me. And that’s judgement & hatred. With the inherent multiplier effect that social media possesses, the negativity gets many times louder as well. Imagine this, it’s very hard to swallow a pill of criticism from a single person. It often ruins your entire day. When I, for the first time, was at the receiving end of negativity from people, it hit me hard. The negativity had me paralyzed. I thought of quitting a few times as well. The sheer magnitude of the number of comments and the inexplicable cruelty behind them just made me hit a pause on everything and reevaluate everything I ever did. Well, I didn’t quit. I’m still going strong and with the grace of God, I’m teaching half a million students every single day. But what did I do with all those haters & naysayers? Well I’m backbiting about them in a TEDx talk right now and I also plan to monetise those haters by publishing a book about them next month. Now wish me luck. I might just give my next TEDx talk on how to monetise your haters if things go right with the book.
So while writing the book, I figured a few things that helped me get beyond the judgement of people. First of all, it’s a must to know why people throw this hatred at you for seemingly no good reason. I think I have some insights to share with you people.
I don’t know if you ever noticed this. But did you ever realize that most of the people who say meaninglessly harsh stuff about you, are often lagging behind you in at least a few aspects of their lives? People who’ve achieved more than you, or who’ve achieved more success than you, will probably never criticize you meaninglessly- and there’s a reason for that. They’ve known the success, but they’ve known the failures too. They know how hard the road towards success is. But the ones who trash talk about you- they don’t. And I’ve come to a realization: all these people who criticize you, ever so cruelly on social media, maybe by trying to get at you through the worst comments on your posts, they do that because they want you drag you down to their level. And they get a weird pleasure out of it. They’ll probably never have the courage to start something new like you, and that’s why they want everyone to be like them.
You know why they do this? Because seeing dreamers like you struggle with something gives them this iota of belief to convince themselves that they’re better than you. Now you tell me this, do you want to hold back on your dreams for these people, who are behind you in every way in life, and who hide themselves behind the failures of others? Let them talk. All they want. That’s all they can do anyway. You keep working hard on your dreams. Let your work speak louder than their words.
Since now we know why people hit us with their negativity, it should get a bit easier on our side to handle them. Since a huge part of what I do is online, I have maintained a certain philosophy in the last few years to ensure my mental peace. And today, I want to share that philosophy with you.
Social media really has opened our eyes to whole new worlds. Compared to even a decade ago, we now have friend circles 5-10 times bigger than what we had before. Let’s not go into the which one of them are your ‘real friends’ thing now! But really, because of social media, our social lives have expanded enormously and that also means we now have to encounter the unwanted opinions of a lot more people. Now think of this. We are floating on in our own little boats in a sea of opinions of others, don’t you think? Everything’s fine. We’re on our own boats, minding our own business, till one fine day, somehow, some water enters your boat through some opening. All these openings on our boats, that’s social media. Very often, we allow many people’s opinions to enter our lives through these openings. Now what do we do about this? We close them. We don’t allow these opinions to enter our boats, without our permission, and we make sure they out for good. Easy for me to say, right?
Sometimes, whatever you do, it just hits your nerve. We’re all emotional beings after all. So I have one last armor for you all that you can use to protect yourself.
We’re going to learn how to make a powerbank now. Now this powerbank isn’t your everyday powerbank. It’s not going to charge your phone. You know what it will charge though? You. But I won’t show you how to make it. Unless you promise me, that after the event today, you’ll take thirty minutes out of your life, for you. And you’ll make this powerbank for yourself. Do I have a promise?
Think for a few seconds. How many times did it happen in your life, that you did something absolutely amazing, something you never thought you could do, or how many times you surprised everyone around you with something absolutely incredible that you did? Think about all those times you did something you’ve always dreamed of doing and surprised yourself by your determination? Write all of these down in small pieces of paper. And put them all in a box. And every time you find yourself in situations where people are hurling hate at you for no reason, open this box, and read a few of these notes. And you know what you’ll call this box? Your very own power bank. It won’t charge your phone. It will charge your mind. It will charge your soul. It will charge you, so that you never stop chasing your dreams. It will charge you so that you keep working tirelessly towards your goals, far above these people every single day. Good luck with your dreams. Go chase them, as fast as you can.
