If you’re living your life in such a way that you minimize people being mad at you, you probably won’t do anything of any consequence. That isn’t to say that you should just make everyone mad. But it’s important to realize there will be some people in your life who you’ll never be able to make happy. So you should probably stop trying.
Who are these people? Here are the four I’ve identified.
The Person w/ Their Finger on the Nuke Launch Button
There are some people who seem to have their hand on the trigger of a gun, just looking for someone they can shoot. It’s usually the person who has a huge sensitivity in one area. And as soon as they see you in that area, they’re going to shoot you. There’s nothing you can do about it.
When I directed Echo Conference, we had some people whose issue was “diversity in speakers”. When planning the conference, we reached out to a diverse group of men, women, black, white, hispanic, etc…But for whatever reason we mostly got white men who were able to participate in speaking. Sure enough, the finger-on-the-nuke-launch-button people came out of the woodworks and tried to crucify us for only thinking white men have something to say in the Church. They didn’t know our motives. Frankly, they didn’t care. They just had their hot button issue. There was no way we could make them fully happy.
The Anonymous Internet Reader
If you post a video, a Facebook status update, a blog post… There are anonymous haters on the internet who just love to tear people down. There’s nothing you can do about it.
I don’t exactly know what they get out of this anonymous hate, but it’s a real thing. You’ll never be able to make them happy. They don’t care about honest debate. That’s why they post anonymously, so they can’t be held accountable for what they say. If someone posts anonymously, you can pretty much delete it immediately without reading. They won’t say anything of real value.
The Self-Righteous Person
If anyone ever responds to you saying something like “I would never…”, you can’t count on the fact that they’re self-righteous. More than anything, they’re trying to prove something to themselves by taking a stand against you. Don’t worry about them.
They’re self-righteous because they aren’t actually righteous. Their words hold no real authority except for whatever you give them.
The Insecure Person
Now, we could argue that all three above are insecure. And that’s true. But I’m talking specifically about the person who feels threatened by others. These types of people will tear you down or act unimpressed by anything you say. It’s easy to feel like they don’t like you and they don’t like what you say.
But the truth is, they just don’t like themselves. It’s sad. But they lash out at others because they feel so insecure with who they are. You’ll never be able to make them happy.
It’s so important we don’t worry about what these people think of us. Once we clear their voices out of the way, we can start seeing the people who are actually on our side. They are the ones cheering us on. And we can do great things when we start focusing on those voices instead of the negative ones.
Imagine what you could accomplish if you stopped worrying about what these people thought of you.
What would you add to this list? What other voices should we silence? Chime in with a comment below.
What if you’re at a point in your life in which you see you’re the insecure person in certain points? How do you get out of that feeling that people are trying to tear you down? I’m aware of it happening inside my head and body but I can’t seem to make it stop. I am in a diagnosis proces for autism/aspergers. What can I do?