Dealing With Haters
"What if someone despises me? Let them see to it. But I will see to it that I won't be found doing or saying anything contemptible. What if someone hates me? Let them see to that. But I will see to it that I'm kind and good-natured to all, and prepared to show even the hater where they went wrong. Not in a critical way, or to show off my patience, but genuinely and usefully."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
In today's world that we are living in, with social media prevalent in our lives, you can come across haters or trolls or whatever you want to call them.
I used to post a lot more on Twitter, than I do these days and now and again, I would get haters replying to my posts. This would generally be through frustration or jealousy, because they couldn't do what I was doing, usually because they wanted instant overnight success and weren't prepared to put in the hard work to achieve what they wanted to achieve.
I always used to respond with kindness and concern for them, which was the last thing that they wanted of course; they wanted a reaction! I found that by responding in this way, rather than throwing hate back at them or getting angry and ending up in a slanging match, worked perfectly, as they didn't really know how to react to my kindness and concern!
It really isn't worth giving these haters the encouragement to think they have achieved what they had set out to do.
I certainly don't hate these people and I actually feel sorry for them. They are spending time spewing out hate and venomous comments towards other people, just because they are jealous of what these people are able to do!
Don't stoop to their level and rise above these haters! Accept them for who they are and don't waste valuable time and energy hating them and responding to them in a way that they expect you to.
Like it says at the end of today's meditation and I quote; "Our job is tough enough already. We don't have time to think about what other people are thinking, even if it's about us."