When Others Put You Down

Confidence is a hard task to master, and can be made even more challenging when you encounter people who say things to purposely put you down or hold you back.

As hard as you try to build yourself up, for some reason there always seems to be someone around ready to criticize you or your work. The question is, why do you let it?

Sure, sometimes it's not easy to let comments roll off your back, but it is so important that you learn to do this. Part of being a confident person is learning to be self-assured enough to not let others be in control of how you feel about yourself.

Here's a few tips to remember for the next time you encounter a negative person.

1. If the person is consistently negative, try minimizing your contact with them as much as possible.

2. Take the high road. Despite how tempting it is to retaliate sometimes, you are above that.

3. Thank them for their comments, and then take time to consider their comments and see if you can actually learn anything from them. By doing this, you learn to see negative comments as a gift that is disguised in a bad cover.

4. Consider the person it's coming from. If they commonly put people down or seek out their faults, it's probably their problem, not yours. Often people who seem arrogant and self-important are actually masking their own lack of confidence, jealousy, anger, and so on.

5. Remember that you find what you are looking for. If you are scrolling through someone's Facebook page looking for comments that could have been about you, chances are you'll find something you can interpret that way. Consider that you may be reading too much into what is being said.

Dealing with negative comments, put-downs, and negative people is a test for anyone's confidence levels. Try to make the best you can of them, take anything helpful out of it, and then learn to let it go. Don't let someone else be in control of how you feel about yourself.