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How do you get over the fact that not everyone will like you?

It’s obvious and you would be deluded into thinking everyone you interact with likes you.

But how do you feel it?

Context: I’m a course instructor and I get direct reviews on my lessons and around 95% of feedback is positive to very positive.

There’s less than 5% of my reviews that have real negative and non-constructive comments. Things like accusations of being incompetent or unprepared or full of shit, etc. They mention times I had technical difficulties or made a mistake (like giving an incorrect response)

Just by the numbers alone this is a very small minority overall. Yet these comments stick in my head and make me doubt my abilities.

So what are your strategies or ways you drown out this stuff?

McOkapi ,

Wish I could help with the strategy. I don’t deal with this in any way, I genuinely don’t care if someone likes me or not. I actually don’t think about it. I understand this can be a problem and mess with one’s confidence in a situation like yours, but the numbers speak for themselves - you are in a good place.

Chadus_Maximus ,

I like to pretend that I’m inherently superior to them :)

teawrecks , (edited )

It would be more effort than it’s worth for me to remember them enough to care. Too lazy.

xilliah ,

Flip the table. Anger. Disgust. Judgment. Indifference.

If you want to be nice you can always keep your doors open to resolution. But it makes no sense whatsoever to give away mental and emotional real estate for free to donkeys and assholes. It’s simply too valuable and you should cherish it for yourself.

You might think indifference is the weakest of what I’ve mentioned. But being ignored is extremely painful. Aurelius wrote that this is the default goto if you don’t have a witty comeback.

rainynight65 ,

Many people suffer from impostor syndrome to a degree. Many people make mistakes even when it comes to subject matters they are very familiar with. Everyone has technical problems every now and then - that’s outside of your control. Technology is finicky and increasingly shit.

You’ll always get people who think they know better than you, or could do something better than you. But they aren’t. You are. You got where you are through your work and experience. As long you feel that you’re prepared to the best of your ability and knowledge, I think your conscience can be clear.

You will never have everyone you meet like you. Some people are just basic shitheads, and some of them will write reviews like that precisely to gaslight you into doubting yourself and your abilities. They do it for kicks. If 95% of your reviews are positive, you’re in a good place.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Honestly? I think you just have to age out of it. Like you said, it’s just a fact that not everyone will, but if you care about being liked in the first place, chances are that only time giving you opportunity to not be liked, and absorb the lesson that it doesn’t hurt anything, will move you past that desire.

Me? I had jobs where it was damn near constant hate in one way or another. Patients with dementia on my main job, plus the occasional coworker that just didn’t mesh. On my steadiest side job, I was a bouncer, and if you go a night without someone hating your guts, mark that shit in the calendar because it’s your new holy day.

So I had my give-a-shitter demolished by the time I could drink legally, and I’m not joking. By the time I was 21, I just did not give a fuck about being liked. It’s nice when it happens, but it wasn’t something I put any energy into at all. I just started doing my thing, being me, and enjoying the company of folks that are down with that.

It actually made dating in specific so much more pleasant.

But, yeah, you take enough hits on those reviews, start noticing the pattern that it’s people you would never be able to satisfy in the first place, and it’ll eventually roll off of you.

KittenBiscuits ,

“Give-a-shitter”

Lol

I may borrow this.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

You don’t want mine. It was defective when I was born, and broke too damn easy lol.

But yeah, have fun with it. It’s a family thing, so don’t be surprised if you get weird looks if you use it in the synonyms Appalachians :)

wuphysics87 ,

I’m a 36 year old professor. My only negative evaluation this past semester was that I didn’t give homework. Though, most of them hated my guts from using grades to tell them their work was mostly average. <Insert Boomer comment about participation trophies>

The students realized they needed to change to improve their grades. And subsequently, they grew the way I expected, which was far more than they thought they would. They recognized I was teaching them more than the material: I was teaching them the meta. That was valuable enough to them to forgive me for being such a dick about the numbers that define their self worth.

So, want the students to give you those glowing 10/10 evaluations? Piss them off and make them glad that you did. Give them something of value that no one has. But, based off of how much you seem to care about the difference between a 95% and 100%, I think, much like my students, you are chasing your participation trophy. Think on it.

dharmacurious ,

Honestly, I just assume no one likes me. It makes life easier. I don’t mean this in, like, an incel way or anything. More like I don’t assume anyone likes me until they give me a reason to think otherwise. I don’t assume they’re hostile, but I do assume I probably just rub them the wrong way, and that, again, unless they give me a reason to believe otherwise, just move on. It makes life easier. I’m rarely disappointed with social interactions, and sometimes very, very pleasantly surprised

IzzyScissor ,

Well, do you like everyone you meet? Why expect everyone else to?

You can make the world’s best apple pie and there are still people who don’t like apples. That’s not a flaw of the pie or them. That’s just life.

I wouldn’t say you get over it, more that you get used to it and realize that it’s not (always) about you.

Fester ,
  1. You are human. Accept that imperfection is a built-in feature. No one is going make 100% of people happy. It’s not possible.
  2. 95% is great. Your lessons are more successful than most, I reckon. You know if you’re doing a good job or not. You’re the expert here - not the 5%.
  3. You have to accept that you can’t control how other people feel, how things affect them, or how they behave. Your lessons may just not reach certain types, and that is probably not your fault. It may not be their fault either, but they may not understand that.
  4. Students (especially teenagers and often college-age) often think they know the one right way that everything should be done. They’ll find out eventually, hopefully, that their views aren’t infallible, or they’ll grow up to be insufferable. Many students are also just vindictive in reviews if they find out a class isn’t as easy as they expected or if they got a bad grade when they didn’t study. The possibilities are so endless that you’ll just drive yourself insane if you try to take every criticism at face value, when they may well be mostly fiction. (Your being upset by the negative reviews may be their intention.)

Look at other reviews of other instructors, teachers, professors, etc. and you’ll see a pattern. Grade yourself on a curve.

tiredofsametab ,

There's a point I reached where I mostly just stopped caring. I also don't like a lot of people, so I suppose the feeling is at least sometimes mutual.

More to your actual point, learning to deal with criticism is a skill and it can be very tough sometimes for everyone. I normally try to think of how that comment is wrong and, if it's not, how I can learn and grow from whatever criticism is. Don't sweat honest mistakes; just try to put systems in place to avoid them (I'm a fan of checklists for some things). For personal attacks or unrelated, just ignore them.

PrincessLeiasCat ,

There are 9-10 billion people on this planet.

Among those people, you have countless personal preference based on everything from what they expect to what makes them comfortable based on past experience.

There are also 10% or so with ADHD and other things, changing it up even more.

So run all of that through a computer showing you a majority of the likely outcomes, and there you go. There’s no way that your style, your choice of content, your presentation, how you present the material, etc, will please everyone because it’s impossible to do.

Aceticon , (edited )

In my country we have a saying: You can’t please both Greeks and Troyans. (Which, by the way, should be Athenians and Troyans to be Historically correct).

The point being that it’s impossible to please everybody all the time, so either there is no point in even trying or if you really care that much about pleasing people you have to pick which ones you want to please.

Further, for me it helps that I put a lot of value in Honesty, so I have almost no tendency to be fake or bullshit to try and please people, and dislike it when others do it to try and please me (and nowadays I am pretty good at detecting fakery) - I would much rather have people give it to me straight than try to bullshit me to “please me” (they’re not even doing it because of me: it’s generally done either as conflict avoidance strategy or trying to get people’s goodwill or sympathy to later extract some personal gains out of it)

Maeve ,

Great points and we see the results with some of our politicians, around the globe.

Maeve ,

Maybe it's not about whether they like you or not, but they fairly evaluated your work? No one is perfect, but it's helpful to take constructive criticism? When you teach and you've thoroughly explained the subject matter in a relatable way, but students miss a few questions, due to typos, being tired, etc, do you give a perfect score when they've missed an answer or two on homework or tests? If you do, how are they to know where they need to reinforce understanding, or explain an answer better? While technical difficulties can't be helped, would that excuse a student's missed homework or answers to questions? How can you be sure they grasp the material? We work with each other and maybe give broad leeway, but no one is perfect, and we all have areas we can improve. Perhaps they like you and want your continued success, as well as students who come behind them?

Subtracty ,

Time helps. I am not a teacher, but I coach.

I feel like I wanted to be loved by my athletes or completely ignored by them when I started coaching. I didn’t want anyone to dislike or doubt my abilities in any way. I went above and beyond to plan practices and be as legitimate as possible as a young coach close (enough) in age to the athletes. I needed firmly establish that I was an authority in the field and worth taking advice from.

I’ll be honest, some of my interactions with athletes during covid broke me. We went remote when facilities and the world shut down. Which meant trying to run fitness classes over zoom for whoever still wanted them. When we returned to in person practice, the athletes just came back cynical and critical (the entire world was just proven to be a shit show, so I understand where they are coming from). I felt like I had to justify my strategy every few weeks, of they did not see immediate results, they just questioned the value in coming to practice.

It took time to build up a reputation with my athletes again. All i could do was continue to do the best job possible and trust my knowledge. We just celebrated having our first Olympian alumni, so things are going well! But not everyone has that same successful result, and want to blame someone for that. Some people will always think they are the smartest person in the room, and you can’t change their way of thinking.

For those 5% of negative reviews, the best case scenario is that you did the best possible job you could. And in a few years, they self reflect and think about how critical they were of you when it really wasn’t anything. Worst case scenario, they tell the story of their instructor, who was in some way incompetent, and everyone just smiles, nods, and gets on with their lives. The otherwise overwhelmingly positive reviews show us that you are preparing your students for whatever the next step is. Some students might not see the value of your work immediately, or 2 years down the road, or ever. Just because they can not see the value in your work does not mean the value was not their.

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