How You Respond to Messages From Strangers Says a Lot About You

Put some thought into how you can be helpful rather than talk down to innocent people who take the time to contact you.

When you have been a writer for a few years and published a few hundred articles, something changes: You start getting messages from strangers you don’t know, who live all over the world.

I see these messages as an absolute privilege, although not all writers do. When you reach a certain level of accomplishment as a writer, it’s easy to go from being just like your reader to being better than your reader (without realizing this is what has happened).

You will get messages from people you don’t know with the following subject lines:

• Can you help me with my writing?
• Will you be on my podcast?
• Can you answer my question?

Or the most common question I get: “I need your help?”

While not intending to, you can find yourself doing what I did a few years ago, responding to these messages with impolite answers that lack empathy and spit phlegm in the face of everything you have achieved.

You can find yourself ungrateful and holding the “expert status” while not realizing that you didn’t go from human to superhuman. You’re still you.

Here’s how to avoid the trap of responding badly:

Know the Thought Process and Context

You first have to get inside the head of the person who sent you a message and doesn’t know you from a bar of Snickers.

The author of the message most likely consumed a piece of your content—read an article, saw a post you wrote, watched a video you made, or listened to your podcast—and felt something. They may have felt joy, excitement, surprise, or encountered a thought they haven’t pondered.

In a rush of emotions, they send you a message to try and continue that feeling by asking for something or seeking your advice. We’ve all been there.

The message is written hastily and without too much thought. They hit send and can’t wait for a response, telling themselves that it won’t be long. Every few hours, they check their inbox looking for that feeling they got from your content.

This is the person messaging you. You get to decide how you respond.

In those moments when you’ve felt like that after consuming a piece of content, what sort of response would you like to receive?

There Will Be “Asks,” and They Are Not Punishable by Death

Many of the messages I get from strangers have asks attached to them. This is not uncommon, and many content creators get similar messages.

It’s easy to make the mistake of seeing an ask as a violation of one of your rules for life. The ask could be poorly worded, selfish, rude, too direct, long-winded and thousands of words long, or lengthy enough that the creator hasn’t thought about your time.

The ask could also come at the wrong time after you have lost your job, buried your mother, or just broken up with the love of your life after being cheated on. The person who wrote this message didn’t know any of that.

It is not your place in society to create invisible rules, elect yourself the judge of life’s courtroom because of your internet success, make a judgment, and then hand down a death sentence.

People who send messages to you haven’t considered the meaning of life or every possible response you might have. They don’t know you and therefore have no idea of what your rules might be.

Have fewer rules about the messages you get, and you might just live a happier life in the process.

Remember You’re Not a Celebrity

It is worth reminding yourself that you are not a celebrity.

You may have written something that went viral or had a million views on your video, but that doesn’t make you special. Your moment in the spotlight can be over in an internet moment, and before you know it, you’ll be right back where you started. It pays to remember that and know where you came from.

A god from outer space didn’t bless you because your content got 2000 claps.

Be grateful people enjoyed what you had to say, but don’t blow the experience out of proportion and think you’re a space angel. You’re not; you’re human.

Think About How Your Response Is a Reflection of You

I find this helpful when I’m crafting a response to a reader who has spent their precious time sending me a note.

With each reply, I say to myself, “Your response is a reflection of you.”

The replies you send can be used to reconfirm to a stranger that they are talking to the same person from the original piece of content or that they are dealing with an entirely different person who isn’t the one they saw in the content and therefore is not real.

Be the same person who created that piece of content that the stranger first fell in love with.

“Leave the World Better Than You Found It”

This is another helpful reminder. When replying to someone, think about how you can leave them better than you found them.

Every day, talk to people you don’t know and leave them just a tiny bit better for having come across you in the course of their life.

What minuscule thing could you do to make someone better off?

Consider the Missed Opportunities

With every response you write, you’re either bringing yourself closer to the buried treasure of hidden opportunities, or repelling those opportunities with the bad odor of arrogance.

Some of the best chances to do cool shit that I’ve encountered have come from strangers. Those strangers were readers, then small fans of mine, then email pals. Later on, these strangers revealed themselves as CEOs, influential people in my field, fellow writers, and friends of people who I’ve idolized my entire life and never thought I’d get to meet.

Maybe your response is the basis of an opportunity. We will never know if you flash your ego like a Rolex and talk down to strangers.

Remember When That Was You

We have all been that person who dropped a note to someone who produced a piece of content that had an impact on us.

We’ve all felt like we were nothing, or would never recover, or lost everything. You have been in the same position as that stranger who sent you a message. You’re not so different from that stranger even if you did make $1000 in 30 days or had a social media post that got a million views.

You came from the same place as that stranger. You have a beating heart, air in your lungs, and an expiry date with life, which you’ll never know until it’s too late.

Before injecting the heroin-like substance of arrogance, entitlement, an overinflated ego, or a sense that your shit doesn’t stink into your response, think again.

Are you really that different to the stranger who sent you a message?

Wrapping Up

Please don’t take this advice the wrong way.

This advice doesn’t mean you help everyone or do 101 favors for people and then tap dance to the local homeless shelter and gift $20,000 while opening the door to your reasonably priced car and leaving gift hampers for everyone who is facing unemployment.

The point is to consider the person behind the message sitting in your inbox and see if you can see a bit of yourself in the message. The point is to help a couple more people than you might have yesterday. It’s about being just a bit more useful than you once were and not talking down to strangers.

But before I leave you, I want to ensure you don’t think of me as some sort of boy scout who was touched by the hands of Mother Teresa.

I don’t always respond to every message, and sometimes I say stuff that upon further reflection lacks empathy and humility. Many messages that find their way into my inbox never get a response or get one or two sentence replies. And other messages get a 1000 word essay with practical step-by-step advice and links to resources that could be helpful.

Not every response you give will be perfect, and that’s not the aim. The aim is to be a person you can be proud of when you read back over the message.

Be helpful to a few people and respond to strangers with empathy.

The way you respond to messages says more about you than the person who sent you the original message.

<<<>>>

If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net