Why people say bad things about companies and people

In business, we see it too often. People deliberately trying to put others down or blacken someone’s name or brand.

But the bigger person, always looks the other way and never responds because there is a lot of pain behind a nasty comment, slander or making up fake reviews just to hurt someone – and I’ve been on the receiving end of all of these at some point. The difference between 10 years ago and today is that I understand that people feel powerful doing this, but they are often at their lowest point because they are sacrificing their own morals, values and honesty by making up slanderous lies. For a second they feel great, but then they lose the power and need to find something else that makes them fill that gap just as fast. It is like crack cocaine – only worse, because it deteriorates your whole being instantly.

Any educated person knows that people that slander people often hate themselves and are insecure.

You do not wake up one morning a bad person. It happens by a thousand tiny surrenders of self-respect to self-interest.
Robert Brault

It’s always sad to see people get so fixated on someone that they lose themselves. They use time that they could be spending on living a happy life, making sure they do everything in their power to ruin another person. The energy that this takes up eats inside of you and it becomes impossible to be truly happy.
If you find yourself feeling this way:

• Re-think your life: What is it that is truly making you unhappy
• See a psychologist and deal with feelings of insecurity and vindictiveness
• Breathe, eat healthy food and drink lots of water. Try to get a good 8 hours sleep
• Use positive thoughts to balance your negativity
• Ask your friends and family to keep you to account. When they see you doing negative things or slandering people, ask them to call you out.
• Read about psychology and what makes a person want to attack another or ruin them. Then work out yourself how to self-manage your feelings
• Find something else to focus on
• Work out why you are jealous and find ways to be proud of yourself and your own accomplishments. Set a goal and strive for it.

If you are on the receiving end of a spiteful, hateful, slanderous person:

• Don’t read or listen to anything that is going to make you feel anxious. Block it out of your life
• Write a note in your diary as to why this person may feel this way about you. Not the slanderous comment, but the “need to bring you down”. Is it that they are truly unhappy? Do they come from a family that is spiteful and vindictive? Are they acting out because life hasn’t dealt them the cards they were hoping for? Did you get that promotion over them? Are you richer or more successful then then?
• Don’t defend yourself. Instead go on with life and find ways to continually do the right thing, be kind to others and go out of your way to be a good person.
• Read up on the psychology of why people do things like this, and how much they are hurting inside, not because of you, but due to their lives not making them happy.
• Realise that you were singled out because you are amazing! You are doing something or living a life that they dream about.
• Don’t stop being you.

The less you respond to rude, critical, argumentative people...the more peaceful your life will become.
Mandy Hale

In business, slander can happen for many reasons, but sometimes competitors hire Indian or Chinese companies to write bad reviews on your company. Here’s what to do:

• If you respond to the bad comments, they will fire 3 or 4 at you each and every time until you are exhausted. This is what the company is paying for.
• Focus on getting case studies and testimonials from clients on your products or services.
• Share “success stories” on social media
• Use content as your voice and share positivity around your product or service.
• If they are pretending to be a past or current employee, you cannot do anything about it. Sites like Glassdoor prey on this and make sure alerts are given to them every time someone writes something so it spirals into the whole 3/1 scenario. 3 bad reviews for 1 good one.
• Suing many of these organisations is near impossible BUT you can hire companies that track the IP address down and then you can directly sue the person. While this is expensive, sometimes it is needed.
• Rarely does an educated person give a company 1 out of 5 because they are balanced and can see good and bad. So know that anyone with half a brain, is ignoring this.
• Counsel your staff because quite often it makes them sad that someone is doing this and it hurts their feelings. They feel hopeless because they don’t know what to do. The truth of the matter is that they can’t do anything and it’s best to ignore it. Your customers and your staff know that by working with you, they are achieving their goals. You can’t put energy into people that are trying to kill business.

Always ignore hateful attitude and rude behaviour of the people. They are powerless without your response.
Bushra Zarrar Rana

“Never explain, never complain” rule stands true especially when people are being nasty and making up stories. Just go about your day and keep focused on all the positive things in the world, your business and people around you.