The Best Way To Handle Criticism And Haters

When you put yourself out there online, you run the risk of not everyone agreeing with you. You also run the risk of not everyone liking you, and that's okay. Deborah Reynolds is with us today on Cash In On Camera to talk about how you can deal with criticism. How can you deal with haters online? Deborah, so great to have you on Cash In On Camera today. I love the fact that you deal with this specific topic because A lot of people are afraid of putting themselves out there for fear of what people will think. What do you say to people who are afraid of taking on that maybe criticism that might come their way when they put themselves out there?

Well, first of all, Cheryl, thank you for having me on the show. It's delight, a delight to be here. This is such an important topic because a lot of people have this fear of being on camera and they have this fear of stepping out on stage or being visible. And part of that process, um, actually requires that we learn to handle the criticism that comes along with that. Obviously, the audiences that we seem to attract, or the ones that are watching us, are going to have a perspective and they're going to have an opinion, and that's okay. We want people to have very specific perspectives and criticisms. Where people get a lot of fear from is where people are overtly aggressive in terms of their response and being downright rude or hateful in their response. So, the idea is how do you actually handle that? And you know, as speakers, as people that are in the public eye, what we find is that we really have to own who we are as individuals. We have to own our own our perspective. And the best way of doing that is really developing what we refer to as mental fitness. Cheryl, you and I are both familiar with physical fitness and we're both familiar with keeping our bodies in shape and being fit in that respect. We grew up with that. However, most people have not learned how to be mentally fit so that they're actually standing into the truth of who they are as individuals. Understanding what their core values are. And if we don't learn to develop that mental fitness and that confidence, that courage, the ability to be bold and stand out there, what happens is that we are self-sabotaging. Not only are other people sabotaging us, but we're internalizing it and we're allowing other people to sabotage our process in terms of really expressing who we are and reaching our potential and our peak performance.

And I think it stems— it really stems from, at the very root of it, the willingness to want to go out there and express an opinion about something. And that could be a difficult thing to, to broach, especially in a world where there are a lot of, um, you know, uh, what do you call it, uh, online quarterbacks, you know, who are online people who are going to be, you know, coming after you for everything that you say. You mentioned about mental fitness. Is mental fitness the same thing as really mental toughness? Because I think like mental toughness means like, it doesn't matter. I'm going to go out there and I'm going to kind of be on the attack. Is mental fitness something that's maybe perhaps a little bit more elegant way of looking at that?

It's actually a more elegant way. So, think of what we've all kind of learned in the corporate world or the business world. We've learned about EQ, which is emotional intelligence. About how we develop ourselves as individuals to be powerful and competent and capable. Mental fitness is about positive intelligence. It's the positive intelligence quotient. So we actually have two different parts of the brain. We actually have the right side part of the brain, which is the more creative part, the prefrontal or the midfrontal cortex. And this is the part where we do our planning, our logic, our planning, organizing, our creativity, our innovation. This is where our sage resides, our ability to innovate and to create really unique things in the world, our intuitive capabilities. We also have the left side, or the older part of the brain, which is the limbic part of the brain, which is— that's where our saboteurs live. This is where the negativity part of the brain lives, and positive emotions do not live in this part of the brain. It's almost as if we have two brains that are side by side and each one has a different function. So what happens is when we're faced with criticism, when we're faced with judgment on a regular basis, when we are having people attack us or question us, or we're trying to learn that process of standing in our own, is that part of the brain, the survival part of the brain, the older part of the brain taps in, and that Actually starts when we're really young, Cheryl. It starts when we're, you know, 3, 4, 5 years of age where that judge criticism comes up. And, you know, you may, you may have been raised by the most loving parents, or you may be the most loving parent raising children and doing your very best to be supportive and encouraging. But what happens is we develop this self-criticism, this self-sabotage that questions what it is that we're doing. It's almost like this little voice in our head. And essentially what happens is we're developing these neural pathways in our brain, and the neural pathways are making a choice as they move down and we're experiencing something in our outer world, or we're developing a thought. It's almost like they split in two at the bottom. So the, the left side is the more negative part of a pathway, which— think of it like an Autobahn freeway. It's very frequently traveled. So it's thicker and it's more frequently traveled. And so it actually shows up more and it's the predominant path of any thought process. However, there's the right part of the brain, which is the sage, the genius, the innovative, creative side that tends to be weaker. And so if we are training our brain with exercises and with fitness on a regular basis, that pathway actually becomes stronger. And this one becomes weaker. And in a process of developing your mental fitness on a daily basis, frequently throughout the day, very specifically within 6 to 8 weeks, we've actually noticed through scientific research that the MRI imaging of the brain lights up in different areas of the brain. So we actually see, in fact, more gray matter on the right side of the brain developing and a weaker gray matter, lesser gray matter in the older limbic system part of the brain. So overall, you become happier, you become more creative, you become calmer when you're faced with criticism and difficult situations or challenges. So you become very centered, very focused, very calm, and you can learn to respond to something instead of react to something. So that mental fitness is actually science-based now.

It's funny you say that because I was like, I was going to say, I didn't realize that there was so much science and frankly physiology biology involved.

Absolutely.

I thought this was all just, you know, more of an emotional kind of like, you know, hey, get out there and express your opinion type of thing. But what you're saying is there really is an actual scientific backing to, to what you're, you're describing, which I love.

Yeah, absolutely. It is 100% science-backed where they've researched, um, in terms of the latest neuroscience and understanding how the brain actually works.

It's such a fascinating, fascinating, you know, but from a marketing perspective, Deborah, because, you know, people need to market themselves and they need to get out there and like you said, have mental fitness, be working on their mental fitness and be able to, you know, go out there. And in the marketing world, they say that you're supposed to really polarize, you know, that if you can have a polarizing message, that you're really on the right track. That if you are getting people who are not agreeing with you, it's actually a good sign. It means that you're not trying to cater to everyone with your message and that you are perhaps maybe more niched down. Do you, do you like that idea? Is that sort of a belief that you hold as well?

I want to hear the other points of view. This becomes really important because if, if I'm an expert in an area and I'm observing an individual or hearing from an individual that has another perspective, another point of view or experience with a situation or a topic, I want to hear what their experience is. Um, and this becomes— it's kind of stemming right back to being a lifelong learner where we're not just becoming teachers and we teach, but that Everyone becomes our, our teacher, essentially. And so you want to hear the other perspective because there might have been something that you might have missed sharing. There might have been a point of view that you failed to actually bring into the fold when you're coming up with a point of view or an opinion about something. And what I find is that in the environments online, when people are sharing a perspective or a point of view, there will be people that will have points of view, but it's very limited in terms of their knowledge. So they'll have a point of view on a topic or a situation, and what'll happen is they will fail to get all the facts and the information which determines perhaps a different outcome and different perspective. So I always like to hear from another person, tell me more about why you arrived at that particular point of view. I want to hear your point of view. And I think it is important if people have differing perspectives than you, you need to build relationships. I mean, I believe that everything that we acquire in life is with and through other people, and therefore the relationship building is important. You need to make other people feel heard in the process to understand their position and their point of view, and wanting to know a little bit more of why perhaps they are attacking you or being a little bit more aggressive in their approach. At the same time, there's got to be a point where maybe you buffer that or you create certain boundaries around that. But it's an expectation. If you're going to be visible in the online world, you simply have to realize that people are going to have an opinion that will not always agree with yours.

And their tone of voice, how they express themselves, could be abrasive or different than how you might respond or have that back and forth discussion with someone on a specific topic. I think you and I both probably are similar in terms of the willingness and want to hear all sides of the story. And I think both of our responses to someone who is combative might be different than others, you know. So what advice do you give to someone, let's say, who is putting their opinion out there, they're, they're talking about their ideas, and they have someone who is combative, someone who is very critical but is not being very nice. How do you respond to that?

Okay, such a great question. So, the idea is to pull back and get very centered first. So, the idea is when you're developing your mental fitness, you become calm first before you're actually responding to the other person. So, you're becoming very centered. You're becoming very calm in your mind. You're reducing your stress level because there's no question that when somebody is verbally attacking you or going at it, essentially, it does raise our adrenaline levels.

The heart rate goes up.

Yeah, it does. So you want to be able to bring that down and you want to be able to calm yourself down so that you can have an intentional response that is geared towards the outcome that you want to be able to have. That takes skill and it takes practice. And the process is actually working on very specific techniques for mental fitness. I'd love to share just a little technique on how that would actually happen. I love it. Okay. So what you can do is, and for you in the audience, you can put your index finger and your thumb together. And I want you to rub the index finger and thumb together with such attention that you can feel the ridges on your fingers. And I want you to keep your mental focus on the ridges on your fingers. So initially you would do this with your eyes closed to focus, and you would only need to be able to do this for 10 seconds. Okay, we usually recommend 2 minutes or 5 minutes. So by focusing, your mind's going to drift, so you bring your mind back to the thumb and the forefinger and the ridges. And you keep focusing on that.

And does that, Deborah, bring— is this like a— I've heard the term spatial referencing where it's kind of grounding you. Is that the idea?

Yeah, this is grounding. So what it is, is this is actually called a PQ rep. It's a repetition in an exercise. They can vary from putting your hands together and rubbing your entire hands and palm So tactile, that can be referred to as focusing, closing your eyes and focusing in on your breath. They can be visual exercises where you're focusing on something and really noticing the details of something, the color, the shading, the texture, how the light hits it. It can be auditory. You can actually close your eyes and listen to the furthest away sounds and those sounds that are closer, and then ultimately really focusing on the sound of the inhale and the exhale. So the idea is developing this to the point of view that you're doing it before you enter into a stressful or tragic or difficult situation. If you know that you're going to be working on a complex problem or a complex project, you know, 10 minutes before you do that, you do some of these exercises for 2 minutes or 5 minutes. To be able to center the brain and to calm the brain down. And then you're able to actually engage in that activity or engage in a conversation being more centered and being more calm and less stressful. There's a whole variety of other techniques that are involved in the process of— we're learning to develop more empathy for ourselves and for other people, appreciation, and gratitude. So there's a system and a process of how you actually develop the brain so that you can calm it down instantaneously. Cheryl, we refer to this as self-command. You actually become so mentally fit that you can, like this, self-command the brain.

I love that. And you know, when you said empathy, and that really resonates with me because I think that's something that we could all use a little bit more of in the world in general, especially in the online world. You know, when it comes to— and somebody actually commented their inner voice can be very hard to get on a positive sometimes. How do you change that? And hopefully, we've just answered that for you with the example that Deborah just shared. But I think it's this idea of like controlling yourself. You can only control what you can control. Other people are going to say what they want to say. They're going to do what they want to do. And you don't have control over their actions. You only have control over how you react to it. Correct. And so, it ties into this idea of controlling the narrative, really controlling what you can control. And I like that you gave examples here of how it's really on you before a stressful situation to be able to calm yourself and to center yourself so that you know how you can, how you will react in certain situations.

It is the ultimate in personal development and the ultimate in creating peak performance in your life. So learning the mental fitness techniques benefits all areas of your life. Your self-control, understanding how to maneuver and work with other relationships and support other relationships in your life as well as business or career. And then also from a business point of view, how to actually engage in the various activities and make really great sound decisions in business or in your corporate or career environment. So the idea is this is about leading yourself to the extreme. This is about really engaging in proper leadership development so that you're learning to master the key, which— I mean, this is such a great computer up here. This is— I mean, there's really nothing better out there. We, we are literally tapping into greater potential. There is science and research around this that you're increasing your capabilities 3 times more, um, or even greater, um, in the process. You know, companies have actually worked this with sales teams. So they're engaging more in conversations with people that are really more empathetic conversations designed around supporting other people rather than trying to get from other people. So, the whole mind shift takes place here. It's really quite powerful.

Deborah, we have a question from a viewer asking, should you stay away from people, just entirely stay away from people who are abrasive? Or as you've been pointing out, learning to calm yourself and not get angry. But the point here is, should we just stay away from those people altogether and just ignore the situation?

Okay, it's a little bit of a complicated thing. I want to be able to answer to it. Until you're developing your mental fitness, I would back away and limit your interaction with those individuals. I want you to develop the mental fitness first, and then it is easier to engage with those people and stand in who you really are. And you're, you're maintaining that confidence and that inner strength without being sucked into a negative conversation and down this rabbit hole. So I think it is very important for people to experience difficult situations and conversations with people. It is one of the ways that we develop the mental fitness. So here's the thing. If people were going through a mental fitness program, they don't want to do it when they're on vacation because you're not actually being— you're not engaging the saboteurs in the brain. You're not dealing with difficult situations like life on a regular basis. When you're on vacation. The best way to develop the brain is when you are dealing with the challenges of life on a daily basis. That is the best time to engage in a program like that that will make a real difference for you.

Deborah, self-command is so important. And I think you've done a great job of painting a picture of how we can really start bringing that into our business lives. And you know what I love about what you've shared is that all roads lead back to leadership. It always seems to all roads lead back to leadership. One of the things we do on the show is we have a segment called Stop Marketing Like It's 1999. I would love to know, Debra Reynolds, what is something that you do to market yourself and your company? A tip, a tool, a tactic, or a technique that's really working for you today?

You know, obviously podcasts like this are a fabulous process So grateful-to-you, Cheryl, for this. The other thing is, of course, you and I met because I did a summit, and summits are really incredible if you can go through a process of engaging with different speakers and experts in the marketplace, learning about them, feature them. I think that's really important. You're giving first and featuring them is a great way of marketing yourself as an expert in your field.

Awesome. Deborah, you have an amazing download. It's a, it's an ebook, 9 Keys to Business Success. Can you tell us about that as I share on the screen?

Absolutely. So part of developing yourself as a leader is understanding your business image and who you are and the elements that are really important to craft a great personal and business image. So these are the 9 keys to kickstart your business image. So obviously a free report that you can download on my website, deborahreynolds.com.

Great. I'm just going to put this on the screen here real quick so that we can share it. Um, here we go. Hang on a second. There we go. Just want to be able to share that on the screen. Some people can see Deborah Reynolds to how it's spelled, deborahreynolds.com. Uh, fantastic. This is so great. Love to have you on the show. I've been really enjoyed this conversation. It's really, I think, something that we see so much of and we're going to see so much more of online. And we all as entrepreneurs and business owners need to, like you said, be able to fortify ourselves and build that mental fitness so that we can deal with the inevitable criticism that may come our way when we are putting ourselves out there and sharing opinions about topics in our niche. So, Deborah, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Really appreciate it.

Thank you, Cheryl. My pleasure.