If you hear 10 comments and nine are positive and one is negative, which one do you remember?

Focus on the positive. Don’t let that one negative comment steer you off course. Be strong enough to believe in yourself and don’t let the haters drag you down.

I made a commitment this month to read and respond to all YouTube comments as in posting daily videos to support this month’s yoga challenge. Most are positive, but of course, some are negative. I stopped responding to my YouTube comments a while ago because they were being either negative or sexual. But this month, because of you, nine out of 10 comments are genuine, awesome yogis sharing their journey of the yoga challenge and it helps me focus on the positive and keep my inspiration to keep sharing and interacting with your journey.

But I’m still human and it hurts my feelings when someone who doesn’t know me says what I do isn’t yoga, that I am an embarrassment to women who have actually studied yoga, and that I am just a woman exhibiting herself in a posture to get views.

You can say many things about me, but to say that I’ve never sincerely studied is just a complete lie. You can critique my shorts, my style, my fast talking nature, my handstands, my poses, my fashion, my hair, whatever. But my commitment to the spiritual study of yoga? Just do a little research, read my bio, or one of my books, and you’ll see that perhaps the most defining thing in my life is my commitment to the spiritual path of yoga.

It’s mean-spirited comments like these that make women afraid to share their voice in the world. And what’s sad is that these comments often come from other women.

What compels someone to leave an unresearched negative comment on social media? We forget that there are real people who read the comments we leave.

I realized long ago that you can’t reason with hate. So choose to hate me or anyone else, that’s your decision. But please think twice about spreading hate through negative, destructive comments. If you have constructive criticism coming from love, I am all ears. But mean-spirited hate has no place in my world. Take your hateful speech and go. Not only am I better than that, but you are better than that.

Your thoughts are the fabric of your life. Knit your words together with the fibers of love.

~

Author: Kino MacGregor

Editor: Katarina Tavčar

Photo: Author’s own