Over the years I've learned that ignoring certain things around you is a necessity in order to improve yourself. I haven't always taken care of myself, but when I became aware of the things that I needed to do for me, I learned there were a ton of things that I needed to ignore in order to focus on myself.
1. Toxic "Friends"
I've had the unfortunate experience of having "friends" who really didn't understand me, and made me feel guilty over my life choices that didn't affect them. Whether these actions were intentional or not, at some point I realized that their intentions didn't matter. At the end of the day their comments weren't helpful to me, and the best thing to do was to leave that behind so I could focus not only on my true friends who supported me, but also on myself.
2. Haters
Putting yourself on the internet is just setting yourself up for a barrage of hateful attacks from trolls. To put it bluntly "haters gonna hate." Whatever a hater says you need to fix, even if you fixed it there would be another thing they complain about. No matter what you do, no matter what you say, someone will always find something to complain about. The beauty though is...these people don't matter. There's no reason why a random person on internet should define your life actions. Hell, very few people in the world should have that privilege. Unless you are my best friends, my immediate family, or my boss (for career choices anyway), what you say doesn't matter to me.
3. Self doubt
The little voice in your head telling you that you aren't going good enough is the most difficult thing I've had to ignore. I'm still not fully there. What's helped me the most through this is remaining self-aware. When you know the voice is just that, a voice, then it's easier to tell yourself to ignore it. When you can identify those feelings of self-doubt and recognize that they aren't the reality, then you can move on from them.
I'm not perfect. I never will be. But learning to ignore the things that bring me down has done wonders for raising myself up.
