182: Handling Negativity, Hate and Trolls Online - #GrowYourLife

Hey everyone. Thanks for listening to the Grow youw Life podcast. My name is Jared Mike Rakowski. We haven't met yet. I help coaches, trainers, authors and mentors scale their businesses to six, seven and even eight figures. That's over $10 million. Plus. We built multiple eight figure coaching businesses over the years. And I want to help you get more clients, make more money than you ever imagined, and have the life that you've always dreamed of by impacting people and being able to do all the things that you want to do. And that's what this podcast is for. And today I want to talk about how to handle the negative comments you get on social media, how to professionally handle trolls online, how to handle the negative feedback that we get from people, how to stay positive in the face of negativity. And the truth is this. If you're a coach, if you're a trainer, if you're a mentor, you're gonna have the cesspool, the potty tank, the septic tank of the world slinging crap at you on a regular basis, saying all of this negativity, there's no way to avoid it, there's no way to stop it, there's no way to limit it, and there's nothing that you can do to prevent it. And so a listen, if you're somebody that experienced trauma, you experienced a lot of bullying or narcissist abuse or this in your life, this may be hard for you to hear when you want to go out there and build a business online, because the people who abused you are going to be out there saying things that are going to trigger you and hurt you. This is why I tell people you need to commit to personal development, working on the stuff that hurts you so that you can develop mental toughness, have stronger mental performance, and make your mental health be an important priority for you. So that no matter who comes at you, you don't worry about it, you don't worry about the negativity, you don't worry about them all. Assuming bad things about you. And listen, as a coach, as a trainer, there's a lot of scammers that are out there. People are going to project onto you that you are one of those bad, horrible things that they don't like. That's part of it. No matter how good you are, no matter how much great value you do, no matter how honest or much integrity you have, you're going to have these haters, you're going to have these trolls, you're going to have these people that are going to assume the worst and are going to be convinced of the worst and make up a story in their head that's fabricated, that's not true, that it has no basis in reality about you, because it validates their story inside of them. Okay, so how do you handle this? Well, the first step really is to learn to develop your mental toughness, your mental strength. And for me, I used to really shy away. I used to sweat bullets based off of people saying negative things about me, assuming that I did wrong things. And I had a lot of people that would come at me accusing me of all this terrible stuff that I was, quote, unquote, doing that I wasn't really doing at all in my business. And it made me shrink back. It made me take my message and make it very small. It made me take some of the best parts of my message and not even say them to people because I was afraid of the feedback that I would get from people, the negativity that would come my way. And. And I had to work through that, and I had to commit through that. And. And I ended up working with a therapist@betterhelp.com to help me go through that. Before I could afford that, I used a website called Seven Cups Comm. It's the number seven, and then Cups, and there's counselors on there that you can work with that can help you work through to develop the mental toughness, to develop the mental stability to do this. There's books that you can read, there's ways that you can do this. And here's one of the best things. Boundaries. Learning whose opinions to actually worry about. And I'm going to draw this on the whiteboard here. If you're somebody that's watching on the video, you're going to see this. So I'm drawing a big circle right here. This is everybody in the world. Oh, and they got lots of opinions about you. Here's you in the center, okay? And here's a little tiny circle that's drawn around you in the center. These are your close inner circle. I'm talking less than five people. A lot of you think your inner circle is like 50 to 100 people. No, it's less than five people. Less than five people in your life that you care about, what they think about you, that you take their opinions to heart, that you filter through, and you get to choose and decide that list. Don't ever let anybody decide that for you, or they will manipulate and weasel themselves into your life in a place of authority in your life. I allowed people to do That I regret it. And I had to move away from those people and move them out to the outer circle of people. These are people that you talk to on a regular basis. You. And you don't have to agree with it. You don't even have to agree with who's in your inner circle, by the way. We got to get rid of this idea in our lives that we got to agree with everybody. I don't agree with half the people that are in my inner circle, let alone the ones that I talk to on a regular basis. But I don't have to take on their opinions about me. I don't have to let their opinions about me affect me. And there's a whole bunch of nuances as to why that is. I was raised that anybody's opinion was truth about me. And so I filtered that in my life. And I, anybody, whatever they thought about me, I took on as my reality. And I was living like schizophrenically, not really like clinically diagnosed schizophrenic, but like my brain was all these different things that people thought about me all the time. And I didn't respect my own opinions about me. I didn't have the self esteem inside of me to respect what I thought about me. I thought it was prideful, I thought it was arrogant, I thought it was a bad thing, a selfish thing. And that was the biggest lie that I was ever taught growing up. And a lot of us have that. A lot of us were worry about the negativity that people sling at us because we have that framework or that standard because we want to respect other people, because we want to respect their opinions. Listen, you can respect somebody's right to sling crap at you, they have the right to do that. Listen, if somebody's throwing negativity at you, they have a right to do that. And I'm going to draw another circle out here. These are people that interact with you, but you don't have to interact back with them. And they don't need to be positive or negative, good or bad. But you're going to find, listen, I have made a choice where I only ever interact with positive people. I made a choice where I literally don't even respond back to somebody who slings negativity at me. It's not worth it. It's not worth it. I used to feel like I had to have given account to everybody. There's a Bible verse I twisted give an account for the hope that's, you know, proved. Workmen are not ashamed. Like this idea That I had to give an account to everybody and explain myself and defend myself to everybody. As soon as you stop defending yourself to anybody, you don't even pay like. And you learn that their opinions don't matter. And you. And you learn to strengthen your mind to where you don't worry about what everybody thinks about you, that you don't worry about the opinions that people will sling at you. You become somebody that can build a business successfully. How do you handle the trolls? I delete them. I delete their comments sometimes if it's. If it is bothering me, because here's the thing, I don't respond, but I'll read it and it will bother me. Sometimes I'd be lying if I said it didn't. And then I look up, well, that's an area that I need to grow in if it's bothering me that much. It's an area that I need to. I write it down in my notepad on my phone and I might go talk about it with my therapist or I'll talk with my wife about it, but I don't want to bring the negativity into the relationship with my wife by telling her all the stuff that they're telling me. I used to do that, and it really put a strain on our marriage, on our relationship. I started telling all my friends and my family all the negativity that people were bringing at me. And so all of my conversations were talking about all the negativity that people were slinging at me. And there was no positivity in my relationship because I was constantly talking about all the stuff that other people were doing. And so I had to find somebody that was my therapist that I could talk with about this stuff and work through these triggers. Somebody that that was. That is a confidant, maybe one person in your life. It doesn't have to be a therapist. My wife is this for. For. For a friend of hers. And she's able to bring the negative stuff to her life. But it's kind of, you know, like a form of therapy. You might have that one friend where your friendship is based on that. That's okay. But don't make it all your friends. Don't make it all your family. I'd recommend not making it your spouse. Definitely not to talk about all the negativity is what I mean. But talk about the positivity. Talk about the exciting stuff. Start changing your language and your focus and what you start talking about when you start looking at and what you start saying and how you start interacting with People and do so from a positive light and a positive perspective. Instead of somebody that is complaining all the time, instead of somebody that is. That is constantly worried and stressed out and upset all the time, instead focus on all the good stuff that you want in the world and create boundaries on who you're actually going to pay attention to. And so I delete the negative people. I delete them. I block them from my social media. I don't even respond to them. That's how I handle it. And I realize that those people are hurting. Those people are slinging their crap at me because they're hurting inside because they're sad. They're sad about themselves. They're sad about what they're going through. They're people that don't believe in themselves. They find satisfaction by hurling these horrible negative opinions at us. And it has nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with who I am. And when you know your worth, when you know who you are, when you believe in yourself. For me, as a Christian, as a believer in Jesus, my worth comes from my relationship with Christ. My worth comes from my faith. My worth comes from what I know that God says about me. And God says that he is pleased with me. He looks down at me and says that I'm incredible and amazing and that I'm worthy of love and connection. And so I don't worry about what other people think. When I live in integrity, when I walk out in integrity. And hey, here's the thing. Here's the other thing I want to. I want to challenge you with. I'm going to challenge you here now, okay? If you're somebody who doesn't keep your promises, if you're somebody that's constantly backbiting, criticizing, if you're somebody that's doing things that maybe, you know you shouldn't do, that's where the worry can sometimes come from. I'm not saying that the worry comes from that you are doing something like that. I'm saying if you are, here's the difference. If you're somebody that has experienced trauma, pain, the negativity that, that people hurl at you is gonna impact you whether you did something wrong or not. But if you're something and you know, hey, maybe I need to fix this in my life, maybe I need to be more accountable. Start having that accountability in your life. Start inviting that accountability. Find a mentor, find a coach. Find somebody that can keep you accountable and on track to actually do what you say you're going to do. Start trusting the promises that you make to yourself start believing the things that you say that you're going to do. Start doing the things that you've been putting off when you're an active person, you no longer become worried when anybody thinks about you. One of the biggest reasons why we worry about the negativity from other people is because we're just sitting around focused so much on other people instead of what we need to do in our lives. And so I'm going to challenge you with that. One of the best ways to deal with negativity is to put blinders on and focus on what you're building and not worry about what other people think about you. An active man and woman doesn't have time to worry about those haters. One of the biggest reasons why we end up doing that is because we're too focused on overthinking, overstressing out. What happens is our brains get so focused on ruminating over how everything can go wrong. We're ruminating over all the stuff that we should be doing, all the things that we're not doing, and instead if we actually went out there and just started doing those things, our focus would change. Another thing could be your diet. If you're eating a lot of sugar, if you're eating a lot of negative food, if you're not getting enough sleep, if you're not taking care of yourself, you're not going to expect other people to take care of you. And so that's why self care is so important. And self care isn't just rest or video games or eating a donut because you want to. What I'm talking about when I talk about self care is, is actually taking care of your body, actually taking care of your life, actually taking care of your home and, and, and doing those things because you want to, not because you think, well, I should be doing them. And this will change your life. When you start making yourself a priority, when you start doing what you want to do because you want to do it and you're not worried about what other people think about you. You don't got time for any of those haters that are out there, any of that negativity, because you know you got a vision, you're a person, a man or a woman that has a vision for where you're going in your life, and nothing can stop you. Some good reading for some of you. Check out the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius as well. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is one of my favorite things that I recommend people check out. I, I Listen to them. I read them. There's some videos on YouTube that you can find. Just type in Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. There's a summary that I really like. I posted on my social media. Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Just like the 22 stoic principles are, this. I'm actually going to just go down the list. What to do when you encounter unkindness. Everything depends on how you interpret it, how you should sit, how to stay mindful, how to be deliberate, how to not run away from fear, how to be open to correction, how to have self respect, how to avoid complaining, what to do in the face of adversity. Marcus Aurelius was an emperor in ancient Rome. And, and his diary was called the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. And, and, and, and he wrote down for his own personal thoughts this. And they're applicable today to our own life. And so check them out. They're free as well. You'll find them anywhere. You can find a ton of videos on YouTube about them. They're powerful. It's powerful. Ancient wisdom of stoicism that can help you become stronger mentally, that can help you not be so fearful of what everybody thinks about you. That can help strengthen you to have confidence as a man or woman that knows where they're going in their life. Okay, this is one of the videos that, that I, that I found that I at least like when I look it up. If you're watching the YouTube version, it's the first one that comes up on YouTube. Summary right here. There's a number of people that talk about it, about being yourself, about self discipline. A lot of the personal development training that's out there. This is one of the earliest known personal development sort of texts that are out there that people have been studying through years and years and years that can help you become a more powerful person. Okay, so check those out. I found those really helpful in my life. I think you will as well listen if this has helped you. If you're somebody that's listening to this podcast, share it with somebody. I'd love for this to impact other people as well. If they're dealing with haters, trolls, fearing being canceled on the Internet. We live in the world now where the crowd does have some kind of power, where people can end up shutting us down. But that's not something that you need to worry about, especially when you're just getting started as a business owner, as a coach. Just ignore it. Just put blinders on. Ignore what people think about you. Be yourself. Do the Things that you know that you need to do that are best for you, that are best for you and your family and live your life with confidence. That's why boundaries are so key. Who do you let into your inner circle? Who do you actually care about their opinions of? And really don't care about what anybody else thinks about you, that's the best thing to do. My life got better when I stopped worrying what anybody else thinks or says. I just started doing what I want to do more often. I used to think that was a bad thing. I just think that that was selfish. So that made me a bad person. And I used to have people accuse me of that too. Those aren't people that are meant to be in my life. They're not meant to be in your life. I'm not talking about going out there intentionally abusing people, taking advantage of them, manipulating them for personal gain. Please hear me out. Don't do that. I don't support that and I don't live my life that way. But when you make yourself a priority and you make your mental performance a priority, and you make feeling your best and, and, and operating from your best state of mind a priority, and you stop worrying about other people and what they think and what they say that you should be doing, and you stop letting the should do's that people project on you in the world control your life and you stop taking what other people say, well, you should be doing this or you should be doing that and you let them control you, you become a more powerful person that can go out there and impact the world on a greater level. If you're a coach, if you're a trainer, if you're a mentor, if you're a teacher, if you're a course grader and you want to know how to make more money doing that, that's what I coach people on how to do. I do live virtual events every single month where I show you, I give you the best content, the formula that you need to be successful. We're in the middle of a virtual event right now. You might be able to look at my YouTube channel and find them and go watch through those. Usually the recordings are taken down within a week. After those, you can purchase them later for a low fee of usually about 47 to 97 bucks. I'd love to work with you, I'd love to help you, I'd love to help you make more money in your life, your business. But it's going to take some commitment to mental toughness to do so. Again, share this episode with somebody. If you know that it's impacted you and you think it'll impact somebody else's life, let them know about it. Let them know about the podcast. Grow your life, everybody. We'll talk soon. Have a good one.