My hate mail
I get hate mail all the time. I’ve gotten it for years. It started at least a decade ago or more, when I created Hay House Radio, and people would send me, the Network Producer, hate mail about the particular shows I aired and how I should run them better or even kick certain hosts off the station. (Yes, Wayne Dyer got hate mail, Louise Hay got hate mail….it’s pretty universal). It taught me a lot about people.
So for no particular reason, I found myself trolling my old book reviews this morning, and getting a laugh out of the particularly hostile ones. Book reviews can be a form of hate mail.
Here’s a condensed excerpt of a book review I stumbled on that’s so bitter, I even forwarded to my mom (she gets a laugh).
“Apart from coming across as abrasively full of herself ”¦ in fact it is apparent that Ms Summer has lived a very nice life and apparently has no concept of how bad life can get, how little control ordinary people may have over certain things. It seems to me that Ms Summer is the lucky owner of a newly minted soul, a first lifer (you get them), still reflecting the in glory of wholeness. How nice. Enjoy it while you can.
If I were you Summer, I would have a serious chat with my ‘guides’, your higher self or wherever you are getting your guidance from, because the info you are getting is flawed. Also, read a bit perhaps. Find out what’s out there before making sweeping statements about life, the universe and everything. A considerate person would hedge her bets, show some humility (none here!!!) and show some understanding for the common human experience, which is in fact not all colored roses bubbles and bliss.”
If I were this woman, I’d have thought, “No big deal. I don’t like this book. Move on.”
But this person got deeply triggered, and this is where things can actually get dangerous. She wants me to get triggered with her. She wants me to feel how she feels.
And if I’m not careful, this means that not only could I get really upset or sad, but even worse . . . I could begin to subconsciously hold this other person’s opinion of me inside myself.
If I believe her, and feel hurt by her, then I’m accepting her opinion inside me of who I actually am.
And if I did that, I’d be letting this stranger have power over me, from inside me. Then I’d start to fail to me be, and become a little more like her.
I’d have given her that power over me. Follow that? That’s the Big Daddy concept here.
It’s not about whether or not you’re hurt by words, it’s the slow build-up of doubt they can create. It’s someone else telling you how to think and feel, and if you believe them even the teeniest bit, then you start living a little less like yourself, and a little more like them.
Her words remind me of other emails and reviews I’ve received, most of which tell me how in some way or another I’m fatally flawed, selfish, insensitive, or ignorant and then prescribe how I should fix myself.
Which leads me to remember another email I got a few years back in response to a newsletter just like this one, which, I’ve started to realize, did in fact affect me.
Here’s how that one went down: