One of the principles that I have learnt through my business career is that most groups can be divided into three subgroups: the love group, the swing group and the hate group. One of the mistakes people in marketing sometimes make is assuming everyone is in their love group. The other is trying to directly tackle the hate group.
Life is generally also like this. You will have your love group. These are those who will always see you in a good light. You also have your hate group. These are those that no matter what you do or say will always have an issue with you. Then there is a whole bunch in between who currently neither hate nor love you.
As you interact with others, you need to always remember that not everyone loves you. That is worth repeating: not everyone loves you. As much as you may wish for it to happen, there will always be people in your hate group. You can never, nor should you expect too, have everyone in your love group. Whatever you do, whatever you say, there will always be people that take issue. In their eyes, whatever you do is never good enough. The people in this group may even be people who you would assume belonged in your love group, because supposedly they "love" you. This might include parents, spouses or friends, ones who state their love for you, but always take issue with what you do or say. It might be disguised as telling you that you can do better, or wanting something better for you. In actuality the chances are they want something better for themselves, not for you. The fact of life however, is that not everyone is in your love group.
The other mistake is trying to tackle your hate group head on. I see all too often people in life wasting their time and energy on trying to convince their hate group to change. We can spend hours in heated argument with them. We tell ourselves, if only they could understand, or if only they knew how it was, then they would change, they would see me differently. We even try to change what we do in the hope that this will change their view of us. Truth is when we try to tackle our hate group head on, it merely entrenches their views and begins to frustrate those in our love group. And often trying to change those in our hate group directly ends up having the opposite effect, actually increasing the size of the hate group.
So learn to accept that the hate group is there, will always be there, and that you are not going to change them. Instead spend some time looking at those in your love group. Learn to understand what it is about you and what you do that your love group sees as so great. Then take those aspects and devote your time and energy on them. That will have the result of converting those from your swing group and growing the size and devotion of your love group.
