Have you ever encountered haters on the Internet? 

You know, those negative people who feel that it is incumbent upon them to tell you everything you are doing wrong, especially online. 

It can feel like a blow to the stomach, especially if you know them, or if you have really put your heart and soul into making something the best it can be, only to have it shot down by the critics in the cheap seats.

It can feel that way, but you don’t have to stay in that feeling. There are things you can do to protect yourself from their cheap shots, and none of them involves hiding your light under a bushel.

My favourite comes from a great quote from Theodore Roosevelt, that Brené Brown popularised with her wonderful book Daring Greatly. Here is the quote:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

If you are the person in the arena, the person whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, then those critics are merely cold and timid souls. They do not count; they have not earned the right to an opinion about what you are doing. 

Write out this quote and stick it above your desk, somewhere you will see it and be reminded that you are the doer of deeds, the person who errs and stumbles and gets up again – the person who is daring greatly.

So who is allowed to point out our errors and stumbles? Not the haters.

Everyone needs mentors – people who can point out, from a place of love, the wrong assumptions we might be making about others, or the need to change some of what we are doing. Of course. But who are these mentors?

They are those who are striving in their own arena – the people who are also out there trying to make the world a better place. A person can be a mentor without knowing it, without ever talking to us – maybe we read their book or took their course.

Maybe we read their Tweet and learned that an expression we use without thinking is hurtful to others, and we resolve to stop using it.

To quote Maya Angelou, “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”

It is always important to learn and improve, but don’t let the haters get you down. Their purpose is not to help you become better, but to make themselves feel better by putting you down. Remember that they are cold and timid souls, and move on.

Listen to your fellow doers of deeds, and listen to those who have earned the right to point out how you can do better. The critics in the cheap seats, including those in your own head, have not earned that right.