How To Deal With Other People’s Opinions | 4 STEPS
In this post, we’re going to talk about how to deal with other people’s opinions, so stay tuned.
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The first thing is, other people’s opinions are neutral.
They don’t mean anything until you assign them meaning until you have thought about them.
There could be a bunch of reasons why you have thoughts about them.
For example, a lot of people will write mean comments on my YouTube channel.
They’ll express their opinions to me. Well first I can choose to ignore them or I can choose to have a thought about them.
I can choose to look at them and be like, “Oh my God, that person is right. I should shut down my channel. I’m doing a horrible job.”
OR I can be like, “All right. Well, that’s not my person. Right? They don’t have to watch the videos. That’s not my person.”
The opinion itself and what the person said is completely neutral.
Secondly, I find that an opinion is only really going to affect you on a deep level if you kind of maybe think it’s true.
If somebody who was self-concious about their weight knew that they needed to lose a few pounds, and then maybe somebody that they cared about came up and pinched their tummy flab and said, “Hey, you need to work out a bit, don’t you think?”
Then that person might feel bad, right?
They might be like, “Yeah. They’re right.”
And they might start to feel shame and start to feel bad and take that opinion to heart, right?
Because they know it’s true and maybe it’s something they really want to work on.
But say if that same person went up to somebody with rock-hard abs and went and tried to pinch their abs and said, “Yeah. You really need to go to the gym.”
The person is going to react completely differently because they know that they go to the gym every day.
They know they’re in top physical shape.
They’re probably going to look at the person and be like, “Huh, yeah, that’s funny, right?”
It affects people based on what they believe about themselves, quite often.
Just take a look at that, because if you have confidence in yourself and you really, really have that confidence and you look at yourself and you’re like, “You know what, I am doing a pretty good job. Maybe they didn’t think so, but you know what? I did my best.”
The opinion’s not going to affect you as bad as if you think, “Oh my God, they’re totally right. I’m not good enough. I suck.”
It comes down to your confidence as well.
The third thing, whose opinion are you giving weight to?
Okay. Whose opinion are you giving your thoughts and energy to?
Going back to my YouTube commenters example, I’m not going to give too much weight to somebody who makes a mean comment to me on YouTube.
I don’t know that person. I don’t know what’s going on with that person.
They’re not in my life day today. So I’m probably going to be like, “Okay, whatever. This is not for you. Go find another channel.”
OR I’m not even going to engage or read it.
Versus say if my coach has an opinion about one of my videos and they say, “Hey, you know what, maybe you might want to add this into your video.” OR, “I don’t really think you should have said that.”
I can choose to give that a little bit more weight. I can be like, “Well, you might have a good point about that. I can see what you mean.”
Because this person, like if they were a successful YouTuber and they were doing great and they had all this perspective that I didn’t have, then I would probably give more weight to their opinion.
I also find though that people who have my best interest at heart and people who really are giving me their opinion to help me, they’re not normally mean about it.
They don’t make me feel bad. They actually are just telling me because they think it’s going to help me.
It comes from a different place and it’s completely different.
It’s more like feedback and it’s either helpful and I can choose to take it or not to take it.
And then finally, once you grasp all these things that I’ve written about in this post today, you will need to start redirecting your brain to a healthier place.
For example
When I first started getting the YouTube comments that were mean, they used to affect me, but more than they do now.
Because I had different thoughts about them when I first started out, I didn’t think that my videos were very good and I kind of had confidence issues myself.
And I would be like, “Oh, maybe that person’s right.”
But now, I redirect my brain very quickly too, “That’s not my person.”
Redirecting your brain is something that does take some time, with anything.
Once you recognize it, once you’re like, “Okay. Well, that person’s opinion doesn’t really mean much to me because they don’t really know what I’m doing, or they don’t have all the information, or they don’t really have perspective.”
You kind of have to redirect yourself and be like, “Okay, not going to listen to that, because it doesn’t really have anything to do with me, or it doesn’t affect me.”
OR whatever thought you want to think that’s going to serve you.
Redirecting your brain takes time.
For example, say you moved from one house to another and you’re used to driving to the same place every day, and then you move and you’re kind of on autopilot, and your brain automatically goes to the old place.
You kind of have to redirect yourself because sometimes you could go on autopilot to the old house and then arrive there and be like, “Oh wait, I don’t live here anymore. I’ve got to go to a new place.”
It’s kind of the same way with your brain.
With anything, not just other people’s opinions and how you react to them, but with anything that’s going on that you want to change in your thinking, you got to say to yourself, “Okay, brain, we’re not going to go there. I’m not going to like give too much weight to that person’s opinion because they don’t know my situation.”
Let’s say…
The first thing your brain is going to want to do is making you feel bad and be like, “Oh, that person’s totally right. I should stop doing this because I don’t know what I’m doing.”
That’s the first thing your brain is probably used to doing or some variation of that.
Whatever your brain does, it’s going to do the same thing over and over again and you’re going to have to consciously redirect it to the new pathway that you’re going to create, which can be whatever you want.
But something along the lines of, “Okay. Well, I think I did a good job.” OR, “I’m not going to listen to that right now. I don’t have time for that right now.”
Make your decision to continue on.
Versus, “Yeah, that person might be right. What if I suck? What if I really can’t do it? What if I should really quit?”
Learn to become aware and then redirect. Okay. And that can take some time. It’s kind of like I said before, driving to the old place, driving to the new place.
In Conclusion
And there you have it: How to deal with other people’s opinions, and we all know everyone has one.
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And remember, the current system isn’t perfect, but you can outsmart it. I’m here to prove to you that you do have what it takes.
I’ll see you next time and I can’t wait!
In Work & Life
I’ve got your back
– XO Natalie
