Mary J. Blige ignores other people’s opinions of her as a person and refuses to ever "beat herself up".
The ‘No More Drama’ singer – who is in the process of divorcing Martin ‘Kendu’ Isaacs’ – thinks it is all too easy to be worn down by listening to negative comments or having bad points highlighted, so tries to only focus on what she thinks about herself.
She said: "If you believe what everybody else says you are, you’re going to grind yourself down into the ground.
"Do you believe you’re a good person? Do you believe you’re smart? Do you believe you’re going to achieve what you need to achieve? Yes! Then don’t woryr about it
"You can’t do anything about what other people say about you. You can only affect what you’re going to do…
"Don’t beat yourself up about things that you can’t do anything about.
"That comes from personal experience.
"People are always going to use the worst things against you so it’s up to you to not use those things against you.
"Try to be lighter on yourself, laugh about yourself. Don’t beat yourself up."
And the 46-year-old star refuses to surround herself with "bitter, judgemental people" because she doesn’t want their attitude to affect her.
She told Q magazine: "Think positive, be positive.
"If you hang out with bitter, judgemental people, you become that yourself.
"If they’re saying, ‘You’re not this’ or ‘You won’t do that’, you start going, ‘Maybe I’m not’ or ‘Maybe I won’t’.
"I’ve experienced that. I know it to be true, so don’t deal with it.
"It’s difficult to keep these people out of your life – there’s so much negativity everywhere – so don’t be so hard on yourself and their opinion won’t matter.
"Or better still, don’t let those people into your life in the first place."