How To Deal With Negative Opinions About Us
Hey Tomaz, I would like to thank you for all of the great articles on tennis and the mental toughness that comes along with it.
I’ve been fortunate enough to read and apply this information to my own tennis game and would like to say that slowly but surely it is making an impact on how I play.
I had always been the player to get very angry at matches and would explode with emotion and this was a question that plagued me and I couldn’t figure out why this happened.
Your information on tennis psychology has helped me very much in controlling and applying my best tennis to the game and another fascinating thing, life in general.
But my mind is always wondering and I just wanted to ask you about how our psychology reacts to other people’s negativity.
I mean at times for me I feel like when I hear something negative is said about me or even if I’m around negativity it for some reason bothers me.
I understand we control most of the things that go around in our heads, this is an amazing phenomenon.
But I guess my question is if this is something we can control, or is it on the subconscious level where it affects us no matter what even though we think we beat it.
I would love to hear everything there is to know about this topic and the human psychology on it in general.
May I ask you to leave your input on these questions that yearn for answers in my mind. Thank you very much for your time and your service.
Hi, if I understand your question correctly, it bothers you if someone says something negative about you and what can you do about it.
I think you cannot escape the uncomfortable feelings, but you can decide how MUCH will they affect you.
We are social beings and are not meant to live alone. Actually, a human being is in mortal danger if he is alone in the nature.
There is much higher chance of survival if there are more people.
That’s why we need the acceptance of our group (human kind) because it increases the chances of our survival.
This mechanism is subconscious and very old.
So when someone says something negative about you, they are basically saying that they don’t want you in their group.
This means death for you - at least for the oldest and most primitive part of the brain we have.
So you feel uncomfortable.
You goal is to LISTEN to the critique and then THINK about it and MAKE UP your own mind whether this critique of you is TRUE or NOT.
Perhaps you can learn something about yourself and perhaps it’s just someone else projecting THEIR negativity on you.
Read this very interesting article about projections for better understanding.
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