How To Deal With Negative Comments From Family & Friends

One of the unfortunate downsides of starting to make positive changes in your own life is that as you do that, people around you sometimes get negative. And unfortunately, it can be the people who are closest to you. It doesn't matter what it is. I've seen it in the fitness realm, whether you're starting a new fitness regimen. I've seen it with people beginning new businesses, and I've certainly seen it with people who follow the tips on this channel to become more charismatic. Sometimes the people closest to you just do not like it. And now it seems like you've started to invite this negativity into, into your life. So in this video, what I want to do are give you six things that have helped me to deal with this. And it's across the board, whether it's been fitness, entrepreneurship, getting better at being more charismatic, being more social. If you're starting to get negativity for the choices that you've made, particularly when it's with a growth related subject, I want to help you to deal with that in the future. So here's the first tip. I call it the toddler technique. And the reason is this. If you've ever seen a toddler run around and fall, which they do all the time, when they get back up, the first thing they do isn't just burst into tears. The first thing a toddler does when they fall and they scrape their knee is they get up and they look around, they see who is looking at them and how are they reacting. And when you have a mom who comes screaming across the room to scoop that toddler going, oh my God, are you okay? That kid goes. And you just see the waterworks explode. But I've also seen the same thing. I've seen kids go down hard and the parrot just scoops and go up, goes, whoopsie daisy, there you go. And. And they'd keep running and playing. I bring this up because people don't actually change much when they grow up, right? These ambiguous situations where we don't know how to behave, we look for the people around us to tell us what we should do. And what this means is that when people are being negative to you, they're actually looking to you to tell them, should I continue or should I shut up? So one of the best things to do when people start being negative in kind of an oblique, passive aggressive way is to simply ignore it. Take the wind right out of their sails. So if somebody makes a comment about, say that you started going to the gym and they say, oh, Brian's like super obsessed with the gym. Now, a really easy thing to do is shoot them a glance, go back if there's someone else, talk to them, and bring up a completely different subject. And if they say that, you can look at them or continue on with whatever it is you're doing, whether you're walking, ignore that thread. Now, one of the things that you might be tempted to do is realize that there's an attack underneath it. Don't engage it yet, right? We'll talk about what to do if you do get into a back and forth. But for now, 50% of the negative comments that you get can be dealt with by simply ignoring them. People are hyper aware when they say something and it just goes over on dead air. Very, very powerful technique. So say that they do continue, right? Say you ignore it once and they start to get passive aggressive in their line of questioning. And I can think of one that was very, very particular to me. I was a philosophy major, which meant that in college I got this question all the time, what are you going to do after college? And in fact, some people would be very passive aggressive about it and they'd say, what are you gonna do after school? Are you gonna open up a philosophy store? And I swear to God, I got that dozens and dozens of times. And I would see that underneath that question there was this attack. I would see that they're saying, philosophy's dumb, it's not economically viable, you shouldn't be doing it. And I would begin to address all of those questions. Well, it's good for this reason. And I, you know, blah, blah, blah, and we get into a back and forth. Eventually they just think it was dumb. The fastest, easiest way that I found to deal with it was by purposely misinterpreting passive aggressive questions as if they were literal. So what that means, I know it's a lot of like complicated words is this, they say, what are you gonna do, open a philosophy store? And I go, no, I don't think that's a good idea. And then talk about anything else. Same sort of principle as the ignore technique. What you do right here is you take the wind out of your sail, out of their sails. They're trying to go down the path of being passive aggressive, getting you to bite, engage, get riled up, don't do it, treat it as a literal question. Which brings me to the third thing. If you have done this kind of stuff, what you're going to see is that people now are either going to be direct or they're going to back off. If they back off, great. What you might have done now is invited a direct conversation about why they think you're vain for doing fitness, or why they think philosophy degrees are stupid, or why they think your business is going to fall flat on its face. Great. Now at least we're having an honest conversation. There's not these weird passive aggressive attacks. What I find when somebody finally does ask the question to go, hey, man, like, I don't know, philosophy majors don't make a ton of money, or I feel like it's kind of vain to go to the gym all the time, or don't you know that businesses, like 99% of them fail? Now you can have an honest conversation. What I recommend here is a little bit backwards because a lot of people oftentimes try to be really strong and they have a ton of conviction here, which is good. Conviction is great, but I want to add a nuance to that, and that is to be vulnerable. Let them know the reasons that you've chosen, the things you do, the emotional reasons. So for philosophy majors, I think back on this in my own life. People would finally say, so why did you do philosophy, man? Like, okay, you're not going to start a philosophy store, I get it, but why did you pick philosophy? I'd say, so, man. I got to college and I don't know how you felt, but I had a ton of questions and I thought college was just going to teach me them, like, how should I live? What does a good person do? What does it mean to do the right thing? What is a good life? And I was, all of a sudden, I'm in statistics, and none of these classes were addressing it. Philosophy seemed to be the only class that I had that was even concerned with those questions. And I stuck with it because it was the only one that was asking. And I don't know if I'm going to have an answer by the end of this, but at least it's starting at the foundation. And I hope that serves me for the rest of my life. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Being vulnerable about the fact that I was confused, the fact that I didn't know what to do, I mean, those are very relatable things. If you, for one second, when people ask you these things, drop the certainty that it's going to work out. Because if you're taking an unconventional life path, it's not necessarily going to go great. If you're trying to be an actor or an actress, you're not guaranteed to be Brad Pitt or, or Angelina Jolie. But if you express that, you know what? I love the craft, and there's something about it that makes me feel alive. Even if I'm not getting paid a ton of money, it does something for me that lights me up and that's worth it to me. That will oftentimes get people to just back off. So be vulnerable in those situations where you do get direct questioning. Now, the fourth tip. These are kind of chronological, so people, sometimes a lot of people at this point will have accepted it and backed off. But one of the things I see is you start to get this line, I could never do that. I could never live with the uncertainty of acting and not knowing where my next paycheck was coming from. Or I could never just travel like you do, or I could never go without eating donuts. I just like food too much. How do you handle this? When people say that? There is one rebuttal that I love to all of this, and it's this. Somebody says something to that degree. I could never, you know, I could never not eat donuts. You say, well, you know, it's a good thing that you make decisions for you and I get to make decisions for my life. Because if the roles were reversed, it sounds like we'd both be really unhappy. And that is like. That is a mic drop, explosive conversation. They'll just go, oh, okay, and that's it. That is oftentimes the absolute end of it. Because what you've communicated in that is that, one, I don't need you to approve of it, and I don't need to approve of your life. And secondly, I'm honestly not really impressed with the thing that you're doing. But I. But I don't shove it down your throat that you should do it a different way. Oftentimes you follow these four things. You're going to be done with this negativity if people bring it back up, run through the four steps. And sometimes you might just have to end that relationship. But those four things will oftentimes end any sort of negative attack that you receive. But there are six things that I want to cover today, and that's because I was doing some things wrong. These are things that you shouldn't and should be doing. The first one is don't recruit. Number five. First one of, do not do. Don't recruit people. I remember I went and I read the four hour workweek when I was about 23 years old and I was evangelical. Everyone had to read this book. Everyone had to start a business. They all needed muses they all needed to quit their jobs. Everyone had to read the whole thing. And I would get into arguments with people about whether or not it could work, about whether or not Tim Ferriss was just making shit up if he'd actually done it, if the case studies were real. And I debated for hours and hours and hours, and at the end of it, we never agreed because I hadn't proved anything when I finally shut up and worked on my business and built it. Ironically, now that I've stopped telling people that they need to read the Four Hour Work Week, I get asked more often, hey man, what book should I read to change my life? To start doing the things that you're doing? And I tell them, go read the Four Hour Work Week. So you can't be a recruiter when you find your path, and you found it. I know that there's this temptation that you want to take your friends, your family, the whole damn world along with you and into this new wonderful thing, but you cannot shove it down people's throats. They will not come. And you just invite more negativity into your own life if you do that. So five don't recruit. The sixth one is something that you should do. And this is to make up for the fact that if you don't recruit people, you might feel rather lonely. I was very lucky my best friend was into the stuff with me. But you might not have that good fortune. So if this is the case, you need to find at least one other person that has got your back that is going to take this journey with you. It is so hard to to be the only one in your town or friend group that is trying to do the right thing. And maybe if you're experiencing, you can sympathize with this. So what I recommend is use the wonder of the Internet, get on the subreddit that is related to your thing, go out and in your town, even better, go to a meetup for whatever it is. Because just simply surrounding yourself with other people that share the interests, that want to grow in the way that you do is life changing. I remember we moved to Brazil after I'd quit my job. I had no money, I was leaving on the floor. But we managed. As we talked to people, there were a couple of guys who were interested and four of them joined us. And one of them said, he's like, dude, this feels incredible because it feels like personal development has been my dirty little secret for so long. And if that's how you feel, I just want to tell you that there are tons and tons of communities out there for you to get involved and for you to be part of. And the most powerful thing is not just to have online friends, but to go to the meetup, participate in it. We actually started a New York personal development meetup and out in New York City, if you want to go do that, I think it still exists and you can do it there. So go find your tribe. One other person is going to make you feel like you're not crazy and that can mean all the difference. So I hope that you found these tips helpful. I know that at the time when I was starting, I would have appreciated these myself. And if you do find yourself in that situation where you're the only person out there who's trying to get fit while your friends just smoke weed, you're trying to start a business while everyone else thinks you need to be a corporate drone, know this. You are on a solid path. Other people have done it. There are people out there will help you, and you're not alone. So I hope this helps and I'll see you in the next video.