Ep #144: Let People Hate You

The Confident Coaches Podcast | Let People Hate You

“If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I am not interested in or open to your feedback. There are a million cheap seats in the world today filled with people who will never be brave with their own lives, but will spend every ounce of energy they have hurling advice and judgment at those of us trying to dare greatly.” – Brené Brown

This is how we handle haters. 

But it’s not that easy in reality, is it?

So, how do we let people hate us? Tune in to find out. 

 

The doors to Free to Paid Coach are officially open! If you’re ready to learn the foundational concepts of confidence that get you from being a free coach to a paid coach who makes six figures and beyond, join us right now! 

 

What You’ll Learn:
  • The different types of haters out there. 
  • One question you should be asking yourself if you’re experiencing hate or criticism.
  • Why it’s so hard to let people hate us, and why I believe we have to get comfortable with it.
  • How to handle the different types of haters we experience. 
  • Why our primal fear of being hated is no longer justified in our modern world.
Listen to the Full Episode:

 

Featured on the Show:

 

Full Episode Transcript:

You are listening to episode 144 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where you stop dicking around with armadillos. What? What am I even talking about? All right, let’s go.

Welcome to The Confident Coaches Podcast, a place for creating the self-confidence you need to do your best work as a life coach. If you want to bring more boldness, more resilience, and more joy to your work, this is the place for you. I’m your host, Amy Latta. Let’s dive in.

Hello coaches, I’m so excited to have you here today because I actually am done with my live event by the time you hear this, but I’m recording it before my live event. So it was amazing. It was fabulous. Absolutely nothing went wrong. Everybody had a great time and I can’t wait to do it again. Let’s put it out into the air that it was amazing.

I do know this, I have completely rewritten my Path To 100K program. Like I burned the whole thing down and I rebuilt it from scratch. It’s an entirely different mastermind. I’ve been talking about the Path To 100K and I understood intellectually that I was selling something brand new with this August cohort.

I knew this was new stuff, but I was witnessing how I was still kind of pulling some stuff with me. And I was like, as I was trying to redo the workbook and thinking about how I was going to run my three days I realized how much ease and how much flow. Remember, last week’s podcast was all about hustle and like dropping the hustle for ease and flow.

When I just like, I threw out all my old notes and I just sat down with a notebook, pen and paper and I was like, what’s the first thing they need to know? What’s the second thing they need to know? And then within each of those things, how would I teach that? Is there some stuff that carried over from the previous mastermind incarnation? Absolutely. There’s a couple of concepts like belief plan, Gigi thinking absolutely, some audacious self-concept, some fun stuff like that is in there.

Tools that I have taught in individual coaching sessions here and there. Some things that we talked about a little bit in Free To Paid Coach that I wanted to expand on in Path To 100K. But there’s entire sections that I literally was just writing a completely new book. I’m so excited.

I also just finished my advanced certification for feminist coaching project, which was a small course on make 100K by telling the patriarchy to fuck off. So I printed that workbook for my masterminders as well. I’m so excited.

I’m so excited at the fact that how wonderful it was to teach it to them last week, when you’re listening to this podcast but before I’m actually recording it. They loved it. They ate it all up. We swam in it and we rubbed our bodies all over the workbooks and everybody was like, “This was the best thing ever.” You really should have been there.

Okay, so today’s topic, well listen, I’m just going to come right out of the gate, all right? I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you because it needs to be said, no one wants to hear it, and every time I say it I can literally see the wincing on people’s face. And it’s this, you need to let people hate you. Yeah, that’s what I said. You need to be okay that some people are going to hate you. They are not going to like you.

A phrase that came up in a Free To Paid coach call, there’s a coach in there, Brandi, and she is hilarious. She beats to her own drum, she so knows who she is and she’s just trying to figure out how to speak to them. I have no doubt she is going to be a star, star student.

And we’re in the middle of coaching and she’s like, “Listen, I don’t dick around with the armadillos.” And it’s not Brady Bunch style, it’s a webinar style. But I do keep a Q&A box on the side, and oh my gosh, all the comments just started pouring in, did she just say dick with armadillos?

And I was like, this needs to be a podcast. And I was like, oh, I’m already planning a podcast on how to be comfortable with letting people hate you and it’s the same idea, letting people hate you and don’t dick around with armadillos. In her phrasing she’s saying the armadillos are those nuisances that come around and you’ve spent a lot of time trying to take care of them or to get them to go away or to get them to get off your yard or whatever. I live in Missouri, we don’t have armadillos here.

Or you could decide you’re not dicking around with them anymore. And that’s what this is about. So don’t dick around with the armadillos. What the hell are we talking about? So in this instance armadillos are just people who for whatever reason don’t like you. They show up in your news feed, they show up in your comments, they show up when you post anonymous tell me what you want to know and ask me anythings that I’ve done before.

They are people who bad talk you behind your back. They are people who when someone else says, hey, I’m considering working with so and so, they are the first one to be like, oh no, I would never work with so and so. These are people who hate you. Not people who are neutral about you.

I want to be really clear, we’re not talking about people who don’t really have much opinion about you one way or another. We’re not talking about people who just don’t really know you that well. We’re talking about people who do not like you. People who hate you. We are not sugarcoating the relationship that we have with these people.

So there’s a few types of armadillos, there’s a few types of haters out there. The first ones are the easiest ones that I think there are to let go. And those are the people who just, like they don’t have a clue what you’re doing and they just aren’t happy with you at all. And I want to be really clear, these are the groups of haters that you need to spend the absolute least amount of your energy on. There is zero worry about these people whatsoever.

The number one reason being because they don’t have any skin in the game. They aren’t even in the coaching world, they aren’t even an entrepreneur, they are just like out there from left field. These are like the strangers on the internet who don’t know anything about you, who aren’t even doing what you’re doing, and here they come along telling you what they think.

And to be honest, they don’t matter. They literally don’t matter. There are people who will literally just argue with other complete strangers on the internet, and this is the absolute lowest form of armadillo in your sphere. I’m not saying that those people as human beings are terrible humans.

I’m just saying as far as you are concerned, you do not need to give one ounce of consideration to them. Let them go be and do and say whatever they want to go be, do, and say. I say the easiest thing is to ignore them, block them, hide them, whatever. They got no skin in the game.

Some people who don’t have skin in the game, you might know. These might be relatives or friends who are not digging what you’re doing at all. They do not like what you’re doing. But I still think it comes back to the do they have skin in the game or not?

And this is where I want to remind you of there’s two versions of a similar quote. The original version came from Teddy Roosevelt, he talked about the man in the arena, you know, that it’s not the critic who counts. It’s not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. Credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. And the quote goes on, et cetera, et cetera.

And then that quote was co-opted and kind of reworked and given lots of credit to by Brene Brown. She gives him full credit. And she kind of reworded it like this, and this is the one that I think is probably easier to digest and what I want you to remember right now.

If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I am not interested in or open to your feedback. There are a million cheap seats in the world today filled with people who will never be brave with their own lives, but will spend every ounce of energy they have hurling advice and judgment at those of us trying to dare greatly.

This is how we handle these kind of haters, these armadillos who aren’t even on our road. We are not interested, nor are we open to their feedback. You might want to try to argue with them, but just realize that arguing with a stranger on the internet is of zero use to you. And we’re going to talk a little bit more about why you don’t want to dick around with any of these armadillos, but these should be the easiest ones to let go of.

Now, some of your haters, some of your armadillos are people who disagree with what you’re doing and they are in the arena. They are doing work alongside of you and they just don’t like what you’re doing. They don’t think what you’re doing is okay. They think what you’re doing is unsafe.

They think that you should be certified and you’re not. They think you should have a psychology degree and you don’t. They think you should not be doing your work at all because that’s a therapist’s work. Or they’re a life coach also, but they are certified in a different method and they think they don’t like your method at all.

So these are people who are in the arena and they are doing work maybe parallel to us or anything like that. But we still don’t really need to dick around with them. We might need a little bit more thought work around this one in terms of you being sure you know the value of your work and why you believe in what you believe.

That really being okay that there are people in the arena with you who are going to fight the battles a different way and they’re going to have opinions about the way that you do. Now, I’m going to give you a question to ask in just a moment when I bring in the third type of armadillo. And this one is, this one to me can be sometimes the more painful one.

These are people who used to love you. Who maybe they’re a former client, or a former colleague, or a former employee. The two of you were battling alongside each other in the arena at one point and now they’ve stepped away from you.

And not just have they stepped away with you, they now disagree with you, they are now unhappy with their service, they are unhappy with you. This one, because there once was that bond and you did use to dick around with this person in a positive way, this one can create some pain, and I want you to allow some grief for that.

Now, I have talked in the past, there is a podcast episode regarding when you get negative feedback. So both the person who works alongside of you who doesn’t agree with anything that you’re doing, and the person who used to work with you in some way, who now doesn’t agree with you.

Both sets of people I think it’s really helpful to consider where might they be right? What can you learn from their disagreement? What can you glean from what they are saying? And what might you know that they don’t? What do you see that they can’t? What do you believe in your bones, in your gut that they just aren’t with you on?

This, to me, is the best way to approach when it comes to something like that. And here’s the thing, we’re still not really dicking around with them. We’re not engaging with them. We are allowing them to go do whatever they’re going to do, but our work is just to answer that question so we reinforce why we believe what we believe and why we’re doing what we’re doing. And then we just let them go on their merry way.

Don’t you wish it was that easy, to just let them go on their merry way? It’s not that easy all the time, is it? Why is it so hard to let people hate you? You can go do that exercise where you see where they might be right and see where they might be wrong and then just decide how you want to think and feel about you, but does it still kind of get under your skin a little bit?

Well, it makes sense why we want to dick around with the armadillos. First of all, our survival used to depend on it. Like way back in caveman and cave woman days, way back in prehistoric times we would live in villages and we would be a part of a community and a part of a tribe. And there were like hundreds to thousands of miles between you and the next group or tribe.

And so if people didn’t like you, if you didn’t fit into the community, if you weren’t seen as a value to them, you were banished from the tribe and that meant death. So it’s literally written on our DNA to make sure that people are okay with us so we don’t get kicked out of the tribe.

The problem now is that there’s like another community right next door, and there’s another one right next door to that. In the online community there’s a ton of communities you can be a part of. So whether in person or online, that fear is no longer justified.

It is still written in our DNA, so it’s just about recognizing, oh, I see you and I hear you and actually that’s not true, we aren’t actually going to die, Helga brain, thank you very much. We might also worry about our reputation, particularly if it’s people kind of like talking trash about us behind our back.

Will people hire me if someone hates me? To which I think we need to talk about the honest truth, maybe not. There might be some people who don’t hire you because they hear someone else say all the things they hate about you. To which I say okay. I don’t think I want anybody to work with me if hearing one story or hearing stories about me would make them say, “Oh, I don’t know.”

I want to work with people who when they hear those stories, they go, “Really? I love her. I feel like I know her. I listen to her podcast every week. I read everything that she says. That thing that you’re talking about that you hate, oh my God, that’s what I love about her.” I want to work with those people. I want to work with the people that even in the face of hearing why other people don’t like me, they’re like, “Oh, that’s weird.”

So this is about really believing that there are plenty of people who would do that for you. That when you show up in your amazingness, and we’re going to get to this in just a moment about why this is so important. But before we get to the why it’s so important, why it is really important for you to let people hate you, let’s talk about another reason why it gets under your skin.

It just goes back to the patriarchal structures and hierarchical structures of really understanding that our value and our worth has always been in serving others. So if people hate us, then we start attaching that idea to our inherent worth and value. That our value to a community, our value on this earth and our ability to serve other people depends on people liking us.

If people hate us, how can we serve them? Public shaming, public humiliation, this used to be a very real thing and it’s a great way to keep us small and in containment and in alignment with the rules, by making sure that we don’t rock any boats. That way, no one can hate us, therefore we can be kept in line. I mean, ew, right?

Here’s the thing, you can if you want to. Anybody who’s not yet comfortable with that, I don’t fault you. It is uncomfortable, I do understand. This is why the work that we’re doing in Free To Paid Coach and especially in Path To 100K where we’re dismantling patriarchy, and we’re creating self-safety, and we’re learning how to work with our nervous system when it freaks out.

That’s why that work is so important. But if you aren’t ready for it yet, I do understand. I wasn’t ready for it for a really long time. But here’s what I want to offer you.

Here’s why I believe we have to let people hate us, why we have to stop dicking around with the armadillos. Because if you don’t, then you don’t know you. When you attempt to make sure no one hates you, you are damaging the relationship you have with yourself. And that’s the single most important relationship you can possibly have.

This is an opportunity to deepen your unconditional love for yourself, to have your own back on a way deeper level than you ever have. You know you got you, it doesn’t matter what they’re saying out there about you because you know you got you. This means more self-trust. We’re not worried about imposter syndrome anymore. We’re not worried about faking it until you make it because we know who we are.

I want you to really think about it, when there are 100 different people and you’re trying to ensure that all 100 people, that none of them hate you, you have to show up as 100 different versions of you. How can you possibly know your real self when you’re constantly pretending to be something that you aren’t so that no one will hate you?

First of all, that’s exhausting. But it’s really helpful to understand that if you aren’t willing to be misunderstood, you can’t understand yourself. And understanding yourself is what’s going to allow you to put out your most brilliant work out into the community so that your perfect people, the ones who will say, “Her? I love her. That thing you say you hate is why I love her.”

You have to show up, you have to understand yourself so you can present that version to you so those perfect people will be like, “I want her, she’s my person. I love everything that she says, and even the stuff I don’t completely agree with, doesn’t bother me. I am 100% on the Amy train.”

Imagine how much more freedom you have. How much more freeing it is, you don’t have that weight that you’re carrying around with you. We think that if people hate us, we’re going to feel terrible. What I want to offer to you is that when you allow people to hate you and you decide that it has no meaning on to your value or your worth as a human being and then you just get to show up as yourself, you actually feel so much lighter, so much freer.

And here’s the thing, when you’re so consumed with dicking around with the armadillos, this is a terrible use of your energy, right? That’s time you aren’t serving the people who do love you. That’s time you aren’t solving for their problems and speaking directly to them because we’re not even worried about the other people.

And when you’re so busy trying to dick around the armadillos and worrying about who hates you and who doesn’t hate you and answering them and trying to make sure that they don’t hate you anymore. You want to know you’re doing? Your people, your people are like, “Hello, do you remember me? I love you. Why are you dicking around with those people over there? What about me? You want to go dick around with the armadillos, I’m a beautiful, amazing gazelle. Don’t you want to frolic with me?”

I’m using the weirdest analogies in this episode. Don’t dick around with armadillos, frolic with the gazelles. My love’s, this is my wish for you, is that you see that there’s actually freedom and so much less weight and so much more openness and love when you allow people to be wrong about you, to misunderstand you, to hate you. Allow them to do that and understand that that doesn’t have any meaning or value against you.

You are still beautiful, you are still golden. And they get to choose what they think about you. And you’re just going to be over here doing your thing. You ready to go? All right, then let’s go. All right, coach until next week, let’s go get paid.

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Thanks so much for listening to The Confident Coaches Podcast. I invite you to learn more. Come visit me at amylatta.com and until next week, let’s go do epic stuff.

 
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