I've experienced a lot of "haters" and toxic people throughout my adult life. For those of you who have seen my many quotes about toxic people and haters, you would no doubt be aware that I have had an overdose of these people.
The analogy I use is that haters can see you walk on water, and say it’s because you can’t swim. No matter what you do, and no matter how well you treat others, you’re attacked, criticized and ostracized. Some people just want to bring you down and will do whatever it takes.
For a significant part of my adult life, there have people who have tried to stop me in my tracks. As a young “woman” (but more accurately, girl) in my early 20s, when I first experienced the haters, it was a complete shock for me to realise that there are so many people out there who want to cause you harm. And even more shocking, was that in most cases, it came from people I never expected; people who I rightly assumed would be supporters and allies throughout my life.
Quickly I learned that the happier you are and the more you enjoy life, the more others hate and envy you. Beware that there can be people around you, whose feelings of hate and jealousy remain in submission until they see an opportunity to strike and seek their much desired 'revenge'.
It doesn’t impact me now, of course. I'm immune to haters because I’ve seen the worst, yet I’m still standing. But back then, it took a lot of strength to not only withstand the senseless, intense and extreme hate vendetta waged against me by numbers of unified people, sparked illegitimately without just or reasonable cause, but it also took some serious soul searching to ensure that it didn’t negatively impact on my self-esteem or adversely change who I was. It wasn't easy for me; it was the worst thing I've ever been through; but I'm proud to say that I survived and as a result, it is impossible for anyone to ever bring me down.
In my early adulthood, my father nailed it; once telling all my family and friends in a speech at an important life celebration, “Alana’s determined. She’s extremely determined.”
And this one character trait, that my dad revealed to everyone that day, is the one trait that has got me through. I was determined to never become one of the “haters”. I was determined to never be resentful. I was determined to not let them destroy my life. I was extremely determined to be ‘unaffected’ by this horrendous experience and achieve incredible things regardless. I was determined to master my mindset to make me completely bulletproof and untouchable to anyone who ever unleashed on me or betrayed me again. I was determined to be the person I was brought up to be and MORE and I was determined to use these negative experiences to make me wiser, stronger and smarter than ever before.
The brilliant spin-off is that I have become very resilient to haters. They have driven me to do more, be more and achieve more, for which I am most grateful. They've made me bulletproof; so much so that I have been able to survive some pretty major adversities since then. I’m not afraid of them or what they can do to me. The only thing they can do successfully is drive me to fly higher. There is so much freedom and power associated with this position that many will never know.
