Not Everyone is Going to Like You and That is Okay.

I sit here writing with a face full of
make-up that I’m trying desperately
not to stain with tears. “Suck it up,” I
say to myself. “Please try not to let it
bother you,” my loving mother
encouraged to me on the phone, just
twenty short minutes ago. “People are
just so mean,” she said.
And she’s right. They can be.
When I decided to go into TV news as
a teenager, I was as hopeful and
starry-eyed as thousands of others who
think that they were born to be on TV.
It’ll be so glamorous, they think to
themselves. Can you imagine? Total
strangers knowing your name;
knowing who you are and what you do.
Everyone knows going into this
business that you can be subjected to a
certain amount of scrutiny. For
women, it’s even truer than it is for
men. It’s a given. Yet here I sit, face
hot and hands shaking, after a viewer
whom I’ve never met decided she
needed me and the entire staff at my
station to know just how she feels
about me.
“Please keep her off the desk,” she
implored in her e-mail. “She brings
your A+ newscast down to a B-,” she
insisted. Finally, the ever-threatening ,
“ Please don’t make me switch stations
just to avoid her.”
And there I was in my car, moments
after reading what felt like an
unbelievably personal attack, sobbing
to my mother on the phone. Me. The
glamorous news anchor who
apparently brings down the newscast
an entire letter grade.
How did this happen? When did we, as
a society, become so jaded and
unaware that we find it totally
acceptable to belittle complete
strangers who are just trying to do
their jobs?
Here’s what I’ve come up with: people
don’t like themselves. People are
insecure. People are sad.
It sounds simple, and maybe a little
cliché. Bullies are only bullies because
they are insecure with themselves. It’s
a concept that’s been hammered into
our brains since we were children.
Unfortunately, in the age of social
media and the internet, the capability
of remaining anonymous behind a
screen acts as a proverbial bullet-
proof vest, and it is that much easier
for those bullies to cause emotional
destruction.
No, it’s not ok. Unfortunately, it isn’t
going to stop anytime soon.
So the trick becomes, in my case and
in millions of others, learning how to
let unwarranted attacks that feel so
devastating just roll off our backs.
Whether that attack comes from a
viewer, a teacher, a friend-of-a-friend
or an ex-boyfriend, we can deal with
it…somehow.
Now would be a great time to let you
in on the secret: The secret to ignoring
the meanies, the haters, the jerks and
the bullies. I wish I had a miracle cure-
all for you. I don’t.
You have to find it in yourself- your
awesome, beautiful, tragically-flawed
but effortlessly fabulous self, to say, “I
am enough.”
Look in the mirror. You were born a
blank slate. Yes, we all enter the world
with different circumstances, some
making it much easier for them to
succeed than others. Nonetheless, that
face that you see staring back at you is
a masterpiece of your own making.
Not your mother’s or your father’s.
Not your greatest enemy or your
biggest supporter. It’s all you.
Not everyone is going to be ok with
what you’ve decided to do with your
life. They might hate your hair, your
make up, your sense of humor or your
chosen profession.
Not everyone is going to like you, and
that’s ok.
You are enough.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a show
to do.

Cassie Hager