This is How Not To Take Things Personally.

“The most difficult thing for a man to do is to be himself in a world that is constantly trying to change him.”

This is one of my favorite quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson. When we first start school, we are told to sit down and shut up. We are told not to run, don't misbehave, we are told to fit in. We are essentially told to not express ourselves in any way shape or form. If you have a little bit more energy than the average person as I did, we are rewarded with detention, or even worse, we are assigned four little letters that will define us for the rest of our academic life, which are: A-D-H-D.

Let’s say we survive the education system, and we are now out in the real world. You are now a working man, and you need to wear a suit, a tie, black pants, done-up hair, nice shoes, nice watch, and if you come into work one day looking even a little bit off, you might get called into the office and you’ll be asked, "Is everything okay? We have an image that we have to maintain, and we can’t have you looking like the way you are."

If you are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or even e-mail, communication with people is instant and abundant. If you ever have wanted to put yourself out there in a creative way, like a blog post, or even a Facebook post to be transparent with someone else, you'll either be loved or immediately attacked by the masses. Both are demons that will destroy your art.

How can you be genuine when you are instantly attacked, or loved, for putting your unique self out there. Because of this, it is difficult to produce anything that is truly yours. It's always tainted with, how can I continue to produce work without getting addicted to these loving feels, from the people who love me. Or how can I manipulate my next piece of art, or Instagram picture, to satisfy those who previously attacked me.

This is my advice on how to deal with this. If you want to ignore everyone, we need to take advice from our neighborhood bird. Yes, that's right, a bird. I'll give you an example. It's six in the morning, and there is a bird outside. He is chirping. A man walks by and hears the bird. And he thinks to himself, "Wow, this is the most beautiful sounding bird that I have ever heard." And the man adores the bird. But the bird is not really impacted by this. The bird is doing what he does everyday, which is simply chirping in the morning. Now let's imagine there is a man who is trying to sleep in the building right next to the bird. And this man gets woken up by the chirping. This man is so mad. He is trying to sleep for the first time in weeks, and the stupid bird is not letting it happen. This man genuinely hates the bird. But, the bird is not affected by this. The bird is simply doing what he does best, and he keeps chirping away. Unaffected by the hate or the love. The point is, the bird is just doing him. He does not care about the love, or the hate, or the envy, he is just doing what he does best.

I invite you to take this concept into your own life. Do what you do best, ignore the love and the hate. But accept the constructive criticism. But more importantly, just be you.