From Dr. Henry Cloud:
“If you are human, you care whether people like you or not. It matters to anyone who has a heart. Only the most emotionally and relationally cut off people have zero interest in whether others like them or feel more positively toward them. We all have a human need to be loved by others, and we all enjoy positive appraisals.
“Successful people eventually go through a doorway that is essential to making their personal lives, as well as their professional lives, work: they realize that they do not have to please everyone or have everyone like them. In fact, part of what fuels that realization is the bigger realization that not only do we not have to please everyone, we can’t, even if we wanted to.
“Embrace the reality that it is literally impossible to make everyone happy, and that it’s ok to like and choose some things that some people won’t like or choose. You’ll learn that when you give up what is impossible, you can begin to focus on what is good.
“You’ll realize that just because someone is unhappy with you, it doesn’t require that you give up your purpose, fold your cards or change. You’ll know that making some people unhappy is part of the deal, and you can keep going. When you accept that every decision divides, you quit trying to do the impossible, and you begin to make the right choices, knowing that our choices will divide.”