Good morning and happy Friday, friends! How are we all doing this morning?
Rising Above the Negativity
So this morning, I sat down and planned on writing out a long outline for all of you from the panel that I spoke on with three fellow bloggers at the Healthy Living Summit this past weekend. I actually got about halfway through it, feeling pretty good about it, albeit a bit long-winded.
And then…I accidentally deleted it.
I don’t know what buttons I pushed on this darn keyboard of mine, but it was gone. POOF!
I thought about going back and starting from scratch, but then I realized…I’m already a bit late to the game with this recap, seeing as though everyone else from my panel is more on top of their stuff than I am and have written some phenomenal recaps.
So here’s what I’m going to do. First, if you haven’t already read them, you should definitely go check out all of their recaps:
Heather’s Recap <— Amazing and full of fun photo booth pics
Julie’s Recap <— A great overview on the tech side of how to delete comments, etc.
Brittany’s Recap <—Written probably most similarly to how I would have written mine
Second, I’m going to give you my super-quick rundown because honestly, I’m not sure that any recap I come up with at this point could top those three above. They’re pretty awesome.
So here’s the thing…yes, I’ve dealt with negativity. I would say that 99% of the negativity that I’ve dealt with has been in the comments section of my blog, which is not uncommon, but not the only place it can happen.
How I’ve dealt with that negativity has varied from case to case. For example, one of the things that we did on our presentation was provide a couple examples of negative blog comments and asked the audience how they would respond…would they respond, ignore, or delete?
Comment #1: “You’re an ugly b*tch” – What would you do?
Comment #2: “Girl! Have you ever taken an English class in your life? PLEASE learn how to spell and put a comma in the right freakin’ place!” – What would you do?
While the audience varied in their responses, I think that it was extremely interesting to see just how differently we all think and react personally to things. I mean, if you keep that in mind and really think about it, how often is a “negative comment” not really a negative comment, but more so just someone constructive?
There are really so many different scenarios that I could get into. One of the first negative comments that I received almost a year ago was somebody attacking pictures of my family. It was extremely hurtful and completely unnecessary, so I deleted it immediately. That comment was by no means constructive and really just made me want to throw cookies at their face.
Not my cookies though…I wouldn’t waste those on anyone like that.
But I have had comments where I think that someone really is trying to be constructive but either a) they aren’t totally portraying their viewpoint clearly, or b) they’re still being snarky, which totally overrides me looking at whatever they were really trying say.
What we all need to remember is that constructive criticism is not an excuse for meanness. If somebody really has something that they want to say constructively, then he/she should really figure out how to say it in a way that is not harsh, mean, rude, or snarky.
‘Nuff said.
I will say, that being on this panel was such an incredibly eye opening experience for me. Heather, Julie, Brittany, and I had many long discussions about our own personal experiences and how we were going to present everything in a way that would connect with our audience and fellow readers.
Some Words of Advice…
Unfortunately, I’ll bet that each and every one of you reading this right now has dealt with negativity in some form, whether you have a blog or not. But what we all need to remember is that at the end of the day, you need to be who you are.
The right people will be there to support you no matter what.
And now I will share with you all the same thing that we closed our panel discussion with…
In the worlds of my boy Pauly D., “You Do You!”
Questions for the Morning:
How do you deal with negativity (in the blog world or the real world)?
If you have a blog, have you ever received a negative comment? How did you respond?
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