Why you will piss off a few people and create haters while you grow? [and how to deal with it]

If you are growing. You may piss off a few people and get a few haters too. There could be one or more reasons for this. Here are a few reasons.

For some people, you are not supposed to be anything. When you grow, it’s a hit on their belief system. They will start searching for what is wrong with you. This is to convince themselves that your growth is also making you imperfect. This may or may not be from your immediate social circles.

In social circles, people get used to each other being equal. It breaks the social order when you grow while they stay back in the same place. They may start ignoring you. They may say whatever you achieve is not a big deal. They may start finding faults with you and point them out to show your imperfections. By trying to make you feel insecure, they try to cope up with their own insecurities.

If they don’t know you much, your success will look like a blessing. In their view, you got lucky and your growth is not through hard work. 

Some might become uncomfortable when you are around. They will have the fear that you may call them out whenever they screw up or make a mistake. 

In a survey, they found out that for the Howard Stern program on radio. Haters spent more time listening to him than his fans. That is how they get some material to criticize him. Richard Feynman is a Nobel Prize winner but most people around him call him Half Genius Half Clown. He must have pissed off a few people on the way because he will point out the crap if someone starts talking crap. 

Haters are going to hate and there is nothing much you can do about it.  This applies to presidents of the United States and you equally. Just the size of haters and people you piss off will change. Most U.S presidents are from Ivy League colleges. For example, Clinton is from Yale. Barack Obama studied in both Harvard and Columbia colleges. But Instead of telling people about that. They publicize their fishing trips and them eating hotdogs. This is to convince people that they are average people like others. This is how they blend in your mind to say, they are one among us. They found their way to blend in with others.

To a biologist, both love and hate are similar emotions. Both use a few similar regions in the brain to produce those emotions. The brain shuts off logic in both cases. While in love, it shuts off more regions in the brain because they are less judgmental with the other person. While in hate, depending on the level of hate, people need to use their brains to criticize and plan attacks. At similar levels of hate and love, your hater’s brain works more to think about you than people who love you.

Here are a few ways that you can deal with haters and other people who get pissed off by you while you have your personal growth.

Don’t do their job: How they think about you is their job and not yours. Once you start thinking about how they think about you. You will start swimming in the sea of other’s expectations. This is wrong. Leave their job to them to form opinions about you. You keep doing things that you think are right in your view. 

Strong goals: If you are changing your goals because of haters. Then your goals are not strong enough. Whenever you are influenced by someone’s criticism on you or your goals. Give it time, take a step back and see if anything that they say helps you or your goals?. Very rarely it may happen that there will be something useful they are saying. Look at it from an assessment point of view to see how it may help you in any way. 

Values and trade-offs: Few people may rub their insecurities on you. If you work hard, they would say you don’t have a life. If you eat healthily, they would say you are suppressing your mind. If you work out every evening, they would say you are missing nightlife. If you get up early in the morning, they would say, you live life like a textbook and not human. 

While growing personally, you will prioritize a few things over the others. What you value will have higher priority and that needs a trade-off.  For example, if you want to write a book or run a marathon. You will need to commit a certain number of writing or training hours. The more you focus on your plan to achieve your goal. Your goals will be achievable. You may be trading off a few social gatherings to help yourself commit yourself to these works. It is that simple. Once you know your trade-offs. You will be less influenced by whatever others.

Values and trade-offs need not be black and white. You may decide to have some grey area. But you need to decide what that grey area is. For example, planning to go for social gathering every alternate week. Having a rest and cheat day once a week, etc.

Your own value: Just because one or more people hate you and think low about you doesn’t lower your value. People who try to lower your value are toxic. No matter whatever someone else might have said. You need to believe and trust yourself in self-worth and value yourself more. If they are close to you it’s hard to avoid. But in most cases, you can avoid these people.

The haters ratio: The impact of one hater on you is more than that of your admirers. Generally, for every hater you have, there will be ten people who admire you directly and a hundred people who admire you silently. Once you know this, you will give less importance to the haters.

Speak wherever relevant: When you are passionately working towards something. You will tend to talk about it more everywhere. There would be a set of people who would think you are showing off. You don’t need to speak about your work and passion for new people or groups that are not relevant to your passion or work. It’s irrelevant to them and a waste of your time. You can talk to people who encourage you though.

Never appear too perfect: Looking perfect makes you look less human and can create envy. And envy creates silent enemies. Whenever you post something on social media or talk with people. Along with talking about your work you are passionate about. Also, talk about a few things where things went bad or you screwed up in the process.

Once they have an image of you as an average person with imperfections. You would be creating fewer haters and possibly create more admirers. This also keeps it more real about you. For example, in Jackie Chan movies, they show all the screw-ups after the movie ends. Not that we want him to fall down and break his bones. But it makes us feel good that he is a human-like us and made a lot of mistakes to get the fights to look perfect.

You are different: While most people try to have a comfortable routine. Very few people work towards their passion. You invest a lot of time in it. You treat that work as a part of their Identity whether you are getting paid by it or not. Example, a writer, a runner, a pet, a cook, a designer, etc. When you work on your passion, sometimes it is hard to fit in with everyone around you.  That’s okay. Keep doing what you are doing.