The World is Full Of Narrow-Minded People

As a part of your journey many, many people with either shake there head in discust and tell you everything "bad" about it. There, is also, some who tell you what you "can't" do. Others will be jealous of your success and try to bring you down to normal level.
Having a strategy to deal with all of these critics is critical.
A strategy will save you alot more stress and doubt. A strategy will be your personal defense against critics. The strategy is best separated between the outward response (how you respond to your critics) and the inward response (what you decide to actually do, and how you deal with being criticized).

The Outward Response
When you respond to critics, most of the time, you will force yourself to smile and thank them for their opinion. Remembering that this isn't always there fault. Nature programmed us to be competetive from the start, to be better than everyone else. Nature is telling them they have to pull you down so they can atleast be level with you.
Fighting back -my favorite :)- should be done, in certain situations. Your response shouldn't usually be that strong, because negative thinkers can only rarely be persuaded to change their minds. But, stand your ground and make it clear that you believe in achieving your goals and dreams. In a subtle way, tell them why there wrong.
Then rub in there face!! - just kidding, (:
Of course whenever you deal with people in a direct confrontation, they will fight back. They will get more people, spread rumors, and usally literally fight to the death.
"I can and will not retract, for it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.”

The Inward Response

Regardless of whether you shake the dust off your feet or strike back, your inward response to negativity should be the same. You IGNORE the critics, and do EXACTLY what you had planned. That’s it.
Okay, there are a couple of other things. First, you have to deal with the inner stress of being alone. You’re not actually alone most of the time—lots of other people are dealing with the same kinds of challenges—but it certainly feels that way when you’re under attack.
Secondly, you need a way to monitor your progress. When you’re working towards something important and facing opposition along the way, you need to know you’re on the way track. You do that with setting sub-goals—smaller accomplishments that lead to your big goal—and having regular times of reviewing how things are going.
You can do this with a spreadsheet (I track my annual goals that way and use a quarterly review system), a journal, another master document, or whatever project management system works best for you. The point is you need to check in fairly often to maintain your own motivation when the going gets tough.

Excuses, excuses…
The funny thing about critics is that they aren’t usually persuaded by experience. You’d think that as time goes by and you prove yourself to be right, they would acknowledge this. But it rarely happens that way. More often than not, the critics will find new things to criticize. All of a sudden, they’ll say your accomplishments don’t mean anything—even though earlier they implied otherwise by saying it couldn’t be done. They’ll say you didn’t follow the rules, so therefore your accomplishments are invalid.
In short, you’ll usually hear a lot of excuses even when you succeed. It’s the classic sign of a critic, and rare is the person who calls you up and says, “You know, I was wrong about that. Good job.” Instead, you’ll usually have more of the same complaints, except then you’ll know that recognition from the critics is not a reward worth seeking. Just let it go, and live the life you want.
If you want to change the world, excuses have no place in your life. Leave them to the critics, because they will need them when you’re finished. Now get to work! The world is waiting.


---From the blog The Art of Non-Conformity