Doubters Are Better Fuel Than Haters

It’s pretty common for people to rant online about their “haters.” They fuel their identity and work around proving these ‘haters’ wrong.

There’s a level of narcissism about this. Thinking that people are spending their entire day not just passively thinking about you but actively hating on you.

It might be the case – but often haters ar just people making critical feedback, asking questions. They might even have a good point.

If you think of everyone who isn’t on board with your vision as a hater – you’re going to have a bad time. It’s just not helpful. You can spiral into a delusion of both self grandeur and disconnection with reality.

It’s also unfalsifiable – so you can just spin up the conspiracy against you in your head to be as big as you like – with no connection to any sort of reality – and no matter what happens – you’ll think you’re right.

It’s a delusion of grandeur to think you’re important enough to hate – and that ultimately isn’t a helpful fuel to do whatever impossible thing you want to do.

The reality is that most people don’t care about you. They certainly don’t care enough to hate you. And if they do, they certainly aren’t spending all day ‘hating’ on you.

At worst, they might dislike you. Most likely, they’re probably indifferent. And at best, they’re doubters.

But doubters are a whole different type of fuel. They’re not malicious, they just don’t see the full picture yet.

Doubters are understandable. They need top be persuaded. They need to be shown. They can’t see the vision quite yet. They don’t know what they don’t know.

“It’s always impossible until it’s done”. It’s a great quote, but way harder to live out experientially. Doubters just live in a reality that you haven’t sufficiently impacted yet.

So let that fuel you. It means you have work to do.

This line from the video we did with Pencils of Promise for our first school 8 years ago still rings true: