Rihanna lives her life with "blinders" on.

The 24-year-old singer - who has courted controversy by recording with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown and reportedly smoking marijuana - has stopped worrying about what other people think of her because she knows she can't please everyone all of the time.

"Who wants to be bashed every day of their f**king lives? That's not fun. Today I could eat an apple, and ten people like it and one will not. The next day I could do shots and five people will like it and five won't. What's important is, you never know. You can't do it for the reaction because it's never going to be the same. I learned to live my life with the blinders on. At one point it was so bad, it became numb for me. It was a scary place to be."

Now when people say something negative, Rihanna tries to "decompartmentalize" her feelings.

"I completely shut off from it so much, I didn't feel anything. I didn't feel the good or the bad. It just didn't matter. It was all facade. I put my guard up. It hurts when people say negative stuff but you have to decompartmentalize that. It's not easy," she added to Esquire.