The Number One Lesson I Learned From Haters

There are some valuable lessons that you can learn from haters. More times than not these lessons are learned the hard way. Haters drag people down way too often. Some know they’re doing it. The unfortunate thing is others don’t necessarily think they’re hating. Instead their “being real” or “being a realist.” Whether a hater is oblivious or not, there’s no worse feeling than when your closest friends and family are your haters. In this post, you’ll learn the number one thing that haters taught me that no self help book or business guru can prepare you for.

This phenomenon of haters happens because humans are like crabs in a bucket. Haters attempt to pull down anyone going against the norm. It’s sad but happens all the time.I’m not talking about when haters are roasting, playing pranks, or smack talking. These are harmless and what make your closest relationships so great… but have a tendency to go horribly wrong at times.

Horribly wrong is alright when it doesn’t happen to you! In all seriousness, I’m talking about when it goes way beyond that. The point where you’re receiving beating after beating with no end in sight.

In my mind, there’s nothing worse than when you’re focusing on bettering yourself, getting ahead in life, following your dreams, etc. and the people you care about most don’t support you. The ones you think you can count on the most tend to be the hardest to get over when they turn their backs on you. Talk about being on an island.

Understanding Being Kicked When You’re Down

If this has happened to you, you may know exactly how lonely it can be. If you haven’t experienced this, consider yourself lucky! It’s not fun. To help you understand, it’s like when someone is making fun of an overweight person at the gym. Someone who’s overweight tends to be the most self conscious and vulnerable at the gym. This happens because their failures and insecurities never stick out more than when they’re at the gym.

Now, imagine you’re the overweight person at the gym. Only the person is making fun of you to your face. Now, imagine that person is someone you idolize like an extremely close friend or family member… Do you think that would make most people want to pursue a healthy body image? Probably not.

What’s crazy is this is happening on a daily basis! This order of events is why many people fail, have confidence issues, and don’t follow through with their goals. I can’t stand this behavior. I always say that if you’re the one dragging someone down that you’re like the one making fun of the overweight person at the gym. So begs the question for the hater:

“Why the fuck are you dragging someone down that’s trying to improve their life?!”

Especially when it’s your friends or family members… It’s disgusting, not funny, hurtful, and no matter what you won’t feel any better by doing it. I use this scenario because it tends to hit home with people. No one wants to be the scumbag making fun of the overweight person. But everyone seems to be fine with dragging people down that are starting a business or pursuing a passion.

We need to focus more on building people up instead of dragging them down. After all you never know what people are going through. Your boost of confidence or support could be what keeps someone from giving up. Sometimes all it takes is a simple...

My Story of Haters

This topic is a sore one for me. Before I go into my experience it’s important to know that I recently started pursuing my dreams more. I’m doing so by taking the steps needed to eventually start my own consulting and sales effectiveness business. In order to achieve this goal, I’m starting to blog and vlog about business lessons. Hence why you’re reading this and why I created www.codycameron.com. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I highly recommend it. I may be bias but there’s topics for everyone so you won’t be disappointed!

Blogging and vlogging have been weirdly challenging for me because I’m an introverted person by nature. I constantly force myself out of my comfort zone because it’s needed to be successful. I’ve been putting countless hours of research, website development, learning content, teaching content, reading, etc. to be able to adequately coach others to help them improve their lives. However, no self help book or guru could prepare me for the pain that comes from your closest friends and family being your biggest haters.

When I came out and let everyone know what I was doing it was a big deal for me. I’m someone that posted on social media three or four times a year so I had to force myself to post more or I would never get noticed. So, I did and what happened next really opened my eyes.

Every single one of the people I considered my closest friends didn’t support me at all. Not even one like of Facebook. Something that takes two seconds. No, instead they took the liberty to solely make fun of me. Not the kind of fun poking that lasts a night either. The kind where they’re shit talking for months. So much so that I had to stop talking to them and take myself out of group chats I’d been in for years.

It didn’t stop there. When I took myself out of the equation, they started resorting to sending my blogs and vlogs to everyone they know just to get others laughing with them, at me. I found out about this one from a guy I hadn’t talked to in years. He prompted to tell me it was funny, I was wasting my time, and that I’ll fail.

After that I went and confronted the friend that did this. His response went something like “we're making fun of you because what you’re doing is pointless, besides you’re not even a CEO or something either so why would anyone listen to you?” I guess CEO’s are the only people that you can learn from, right? Forget everything your parent, teacher, boss, co-worker, etc. taught you because if they’re not a CEO they don’t know anything… Yeah that makes sense.

Don’t get me wrong you can learn a lot from CEO’s but most of the information that you can learn from a CEO doesn’t get you far. It doesn’t get you far because you can’t learn how to run without learning how to walk. And if they’re teaching you about sprinting before you’ve mastered walking or running you’re going to fail. Most of these CEO and gurus neglect the basics which are what most people need.

That’s why I started my content now so people can see the progression as I get more and more successful. While gurus talk about haters there’s not too much out there that talk about them when they were early on in their careers. They might be able to reflect on it today but might forget important details.

The One Thing I Learned From My Haters

The number one thing I learned from my haters was when I finally stopped giving a fuck about what they thought. Initially, I took them turning their back on me pretty hard. I was beyond disappoint and offended. I kept thinking “you won’t even take two seconds to like my Facebook page?” Wow. Even if my content wasn’t for them a true friend shows support. It’s not like I was asking for money or anything. Then it turned into “why won’t you guys stop giving me shit?” Until finally it took that last interaction with the kid I haven’t talked to in years to understand what I learned.

Without even knowing it, I found out that I quit giving a fuck what they thought about me long ago. He told me that they were roasting me, betting I would fail, and sharing it for other to laugh and it didn’t phase me one bit. In the past, that would have destroyed me. Instead, I told those haters that it didn’t matter what they thought because I knew what I was capable of. That’s when it hit me. I’d painfully learned this life changing lesson without even realizing it. And it made me stronger.

Since then, I’ve been having numerous successes including more engagement, people reaching out to me, more followers, stories getting published, being a top writer, getting paid, and many other awesome wins! Not only that but I’ve had old friends and acquaintances reach out to me that I haven’t heard from in years telling me they like what I’m doing. Sometimes actions are the best way to show you who your true supporters are.

I feel like I had to get my world turned upside down in order to hold myself more accountable. I had to develop this thick skin and fast or I knew I would never achieve the type of success I know I’m capable of. The best part is I’m nowhere near being done.

I hope you can take my findings and apply them to your life. No matter what I can’t prepare you for how you feel when your closest friends and family turn their back on you. I can just let you know that it’s possible. The biggest thing to remember is to not give a fuck what they think. The best thing you could say when you explain something to them is that you hope they support your decision but don’t care whether they do or don’t. No matter what you’ll never be able to succeed when those people closest to you are constantly dragging you down. These haters will destroy any hopes of success along with all of your dreams. If they continue to hate just be prepared to cut them out because you can’t have both.

If you liked this post, check out some of my best work with the 5 Life Changing Lessons I Learned from Business or my most recent post How Loss Aversion Dominates Your Life.

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Be great,

Cody Cameron