“That was pointless.”

People and their comments.

This was a comment I saw on one of my videos on a talk I gave at the Rails conference in Kansas City, MO. I promised myself that I would never read comments but I read that one and instead of my normal rage and focusing on just how negative humans are and commencing to throw everything I could at this one guy, I instead just wrote: “How so?”

He didn’t reply.

It takes a lot of growth to step out of our ego of ruthless defense to listen to what someone has to say about something about ourselves. Whether it’s negative or wrong or both, it’s hard when someone doesn’t give you constructive criticism and instead just tells you what you’re doing wrong and how you suck.

I would tell you what happened after that talk, but that’s not the focus here.

The focus is how you will respond to unkind people today? Will it stop you in your tracks or will you keep telling your story even when others aren’t satisfied (or listening?)