Three things that make my heart soar:
- When someone on social media says, “You’re stupid!” to me but uses “your” instead of “you’re.”
- When someone tries to make fun of my last name on social media but adds an apostrophe to my name (Dick’s).
- When someone on social media attacks me, but when I don’t notice or bother to respond, they try again.
I love it when mean people appear dumb and needy.
But even when the meany doesn’t sound dumb or desperate, I never care unless a salient point has been made. I’m fortunate to be fairly impenetrable to most of the unkindness and cruelty directed at me.
It’s one of my superpowers.
As one of my students wrote this week, “Mr. Dicks doesn’t care when people make fun of him because he’s always making fun of himself.”
Smart kid.
Also, after writing online every day for nearly two decades — my 20th anniversary is only a month away— and sharing my biggest failures, embarrassments, and moments of shame on stages worldwide for almost 15 years, you become fairly impervious to trolls, naysayers, haters, and malcontents.
Honestly, I’ve always been this way.
I get asked by interviewers and the people I coach how I handle the criticism and judgment of others.
When someone reviews a book poorly, scores a story harshly, or insults me online for an opinion or idea, how do I avoid allowing that criticism to impact me?
My responses typically go like this:
- I have a lot of confidence and self-esteem. Probably too much. It helps a lot.
- When we make or do a thing, we must accept that some or many people will not like our thing. That is part of the “making and doing things” business. Reasonable people are allowed to believe that our act of creation is ridiculous, wrongheaded, or lacking value. You can’t win over everyone.
- It’s easy to ignore non-creators when they unfairly or cruelly attack creators. The non-creator risks nothing and brings nothing new into the world. They are likely lashing out because they know this, and it hurts. Instead of being angry or hurt by their criticism, feel sympathy for them.
- Why would I care what Peter in Peoria thinks? I don’t know the guy and will never know him, so if his criticism strikes me as unfair, unjust, or unkind, I can simply assume that he’s a sad little troll living a menial existence bereft of joy and love.
- Never forget that creation is hard. Criticism is effortless.
Also, when the critic misspells a word or becomes upset because you’ve failed to react to our outburst, that makes it even easier and maybe even a little fun.
