How to Stop Giving a F*ck About Other People’s Opinions (and Take Your Power Back)

Melanie Mishler (: 00:00

Hello love and welcome back to the podcast. It has been a hot minute since I've recorded an episode not gonna lie I ended up kind of unexpectedly taking the summer off because there was a lot going on in my world and a lot of changes a lot of stuff and I've been working on some other projects actually I've been doing a lot of writing on sub stack. I've been working on my new book. So and just really doing a ton of self

y episodes through the end of: 2025

reevaluate and see if I'm gonna keep doing the podcast or switch it to maybe video. I'm not quite sure. So if you have a preference, if this is something that you like, or if you'd prefer video, or you just don't care, let me know. I would love to know.

So today on the podcast, what I wanna talk about is our personal power. And that's kind of been a topic I've been talking about all summer. I've been writing about it on Substack. and if you are not following me on Substack, be sure to go and follow me because that's where I share a lot of personal and really like good stuff. Anyway, so today I wanna talk about

how we kind of hand over our personal power to either to outside validation, whether that is lovers or haters or anywhere in between, just to outside people. And this is top of mind because last week I opened up my email in the morning. I'm not sure why I opened it up first thing in the morning, but I did. And I had an email from a hater, like hate, hate mail.

And man, I'm not gonna lie, it threw me for a loop, especially first thing in the morning, because I normally don't check email in the morning. I normally go through my morning ritual, which includes ⁓ having my coffee, doing my meditation, doing my manifestation journal, and all those things. But I just happened to open my email first thing, got hit with that, and it threw me off center, like so far, because it was nasty. I mean, it was like telling me,

what a horrible person I am and how my work is horrible and I'm a fraud and all those things. It was was just really bad. But here's the thing me got me thinking. There's there's actually a saying in the online industry that like when you get your first hate mail, you actually made it when you get your first hater. So you're supposed to like praise them. And it's kind of funny. There's a podcast that I love listening to. You know, I love true crime. And one of my favorite podcast is called Women in Crime.

It's so well done. If they're two criminologists, I listen to it every week. But some weeks they will do this special segment at the end where they read hate reviews like from the haters. And I have to tell you, it is my favorite when they do it. The reviews are so hilarious. I just laugh out loud listening to them because they're completely absurd. I mean, people writing in saying how

They're disgusted with them and they can't stand them, but they're still listening to the podcast. That's the funny. And they still took the time to write the review, which is really funny. So when you think about that, when we when we can see it from the outside and we see how haters behave on the outside, you see this on Facebook all the time. All the Karens just not minding their own business, just in everything, right? Creating all this chaos and.

creating mess everywhere they go stirring things up. It says so much more about that person, the person who's actually doing that behavior, whether it's being a Karen, leaving nasty reviews, writing hate emails, doing all that stuff. It says so much about them. It actually doesn't say anything about the person they're referring to. But what happens really commonly is we do it

both ways. hand over our power to validation either way, right? Because whether someone's giving you praise or either way, we allow it to kind of dictate our mood or dictate, how we show up.

I want you to think about this because this gets really sensitive, especially when we're putting out something that's personal to us, whether that's our life work. It could be writing. It could be art. It could be anything that you have your heart put into and you are releasing into the world, right? Something that is that's bringing up your vulnerability.

It's really common for people to put something like that out in the world and then wait for the outside validation to feel good, right? If people are praising it, if they're like, that's so great. I love it. Keep up the good work.

any kind of praise. That could even be hearts and likes on Instagram or Facebook. It doesn't even have to be verbal. It can just be emojis. When we receive that validation and we feel good about ourselves, then we're handing over our power to that validation. The same thing happens on the opposite side, right? If we have someone who's like, ⁓ who do you think you are? I think it's kind of shitty.

I don't really like it. I don't get it. Like, what are you even doing here? and then we go down into the spiral, then we're handing over our power to that. So either way, it kind of puts us on a teeter totter, right? Where every day we show up and we're like, hmm, am I getting praise or am I getting hate or is it neutral? And then that kind of dictates how we show up in the world. But there's another way, and this is a way of being super

in line with our own personal power. It's getting our validation from inside of ourselves, from our source. You can call it source. You can call it God. You can call it your higher potential, your full potential self, any of those things. But when we are in line with what we know is true for us

and we put something out into the world that we know we're meant to put out into the world, right? Again, it could be your art, it could be your work, it could be anything. And we validate ourself. So we do self-validation. Then it doesn't matter how the world responds to us. It's kind of like just giving zero fucks about what everyone else says. Because...

When we give a fuck about outside validation, basically what we're doing is we are handing over our power, just handing it over to people who don't know us, to people who don't even care and saying, you like me, if you like what I'm putting out, then I'm okay, I'm worthy, I'm valuable, right?

But if you don't like it, then maybe I'm not okay. Maybe I should just shrink or like it's proof of our unworthiness. And let me tell you, both of these, they equally place our power and our worthiness in the hands of others. We're basically just handing over our power. We're handing over our peace. We're handing over our potential for others to decide.

when we do this, we say, you get to decide if I'm worthy, if I'm able, if I'm capable, if I'm good enough, if ⁓ I should continue doing this work, you get to decide. And it's a cycle of placing our value outside of us. And I'm gonna tell you, everyone does this to a certain degree because it's human nature. you know, we are,

mammals, we're human beings. a basic need for connection. And this is not logical. It's a biological need to be part of the collective for survival. Because I want you to think back to know, caveman days, right?

You couldn't just survive by yourself. Like back when people were running from tigers and all that stuff, you really needed the collective to be able to survive. And gosh, this reminds me when we were in Belize last time, you we have all these monkeys on our property. And what happens is in the troops is that there comes a point where they kick out the male monkeys. I guess they get competitive or something like that. So they kick them out and then they're all alone until I guess they find like a new troop.

usually we'll see the monkeys altogether. They're always traveling in like three, four, sometimes five. But this one day we look up in the tree right next to our house and there's this lonely little monkey just sitting there. He just had the saddest energy just sitting there. And he sat there through the rain. He just sat there all day. The next morning he was just sitting there all by himself because he had been kicked out of the troop.

And I remember feeling like, ⁓ this poor monkey, like, how is he going to survive? He needs other monkeys to, you know, they just, they need each other and we need each other. And so this is why it's such a common thing for us to look outside of ourself for validation in either form. And then for us to kind of gauge our success, our worthiness, our validation, all of those things on what other people are feeding us.

And again, this is not logical, it's biological.

So when we start to take back our personal power and when we start to self-validate, what happens is our happiness and our peace and our power, it comes from inside of our own sovereign self. And with that, it means like my reactions and how I show up are mine and mine alone. They're not dictated by how many likes I get or how many un-likes I get, or if someone unfollows me or if they...

you know, unsubscribe from my email list. It's none of that. And I'm not saying that that's easy. And I'm not saying that we can do that like in one fell swoop, because again, this is a biological need to be liked by our collective, to be part of the collective. But what happens is the more that we practice it, when we notice ourselves going off in the weeds, like when someone...

doesn't like what we do, when they have something nasty to say, when a Karen is like sticking her nose in our business and doing all the things, it's easier for us to come back into center and recalibrate and re-get into our center and our power. So we're not off in the weeds so much. I'm gonna tell you, like, if I had received that email, five years ago, I would have been in bed for a day, maybe two days, and

I would really question my worth. I would question my value. I'd be like, maybe this person's right.

Maybe I don't have anything valuable to say. Maybe people don't like me. Maybe I shouldn't be doing this work. Maybe this isn't my life work. This person gets to decide.

But because I've spent so much time starting to self validate and starting to, give less fucks, quite honestly, just give less fucks, then I'm able to kind of bring myself back to center a lot more easily. And also because I know that when you have haters, then you are actually doing something right.

And we actually want to praise the haters and we can even have compassion for them because I want to tell you what that energy generally is. generally when we see someone doing that behavior, just hating for hate sake, spewing or in other people's business or,

just spinning chaos. Usually what they're saying is, I'm jealous. You're doing something that I want to do. I have something valuable to say and I'm not saying it. I have things and desires in my heart that I'm not currently living. And so when I see other people doing it, it triggers me. It makes me feel insecure, makes me question my own work.

Or with the Karens, I want you to think about, you know, when you go on Facebook, specifically, you'll see lots and lots of Karens who man, they have a lot to say about everything. But I want you to think about how much energy it takes to do that, to all day have something negative to say about other people. You can't be happy when you're doing that. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good to spew about other people.

when you start to really become empathic, like when you really if you if you're an empath or if you're someone who is really sensitive to what others are feeling, then it's actually easier to kind of soften to them and see this person is really hurting. This person really has a lot of potential that they're not living up to. This person really has dreams and desires that they're not in alignment with. And that's what's really going on. And.

as someone who believes that everyone has unlimited potential for happiness and health and wealth and love. I want to see everyone step into their potential. I can you imagine if we were all in our potential? There would be no haters. There would be nothing to hate about. We'd just all be loving all the time. It'd be great. So anyway.

I want to really encourage you this week to see where you try and get outside validation from other people. And again, it could be when you post something online, are you waiting for how many people are liking it? If people aren't liking it, you start to kind of feel like, not good? Or if ⁓ someone unsubscribes from your email list, are you like, well, maybe they don't like me. Let's take away all that story.

And let's just start to self-validate and start celebrating the things that we're doing. Whatever you're doing, if you are putting work out into the world, if you are showing the fuck up and doing the work, then be proud of yourself. Validate yourself. Don't wait for anyone else to give you a gold star to say you're doing a good job. None of it. Do it for yourself. All right, love.

I hope that it stirred something in you and I'm starting to do Tuesday videos. So from, from here on out, I will be doing a video on Tuesday. I'll put it on, on Facebook. It'll also be uploaded to YouTube and then Thursday will be the podcast. So.

If you liked this episode, would love for you to subscribe, share it with a friend, and I will see you next week. Until then, my love, keep manifesting an epic life.