Why? Because liking of any person or thing is always subjective, and no two people have the exact likes, dislikes, tastes, or opinions. Know that there will always be those who do not like you and be okay with it because it bears no reflection on you. We all move in different circles and directions.
It’s just how life works and how we were made.
Continue to love and embrace yourself as the person God created you to be. Continue to enjoy the friends and loved ones you do have and never mind the people you don’t have. They aren’t important.
Embrace your differences because no two people are the same. Accept every flaw and quirk you have. Accept no one’s ignorant, cookie-cutter version of what you should be. You are enough!
Imagine how utterly and downright boring life would be if we were all the same. Imagine a world full of white people, black people, or Hispanics- a world full of people with blonde hair and blue eyes or dark hair and dark eyes- a world full of skinny people…or overweight people- or if everyone had the same tastes opinions or beliefs!
It would be like living in a town where all diners were pizza parlors and served pizza but nothing else. Yuck! I love pizza, but I wouldn’t want to eat that every day!
So love being different. Know that there are people who love you and are begging to spend time with you. And above all else, know that God loves you. You will be alright.
You’ve worked for a toxic company for three years. You’re out of a job because your bully boss either fired you or you get fed up, pulled a Johnny Paycheck, and told your tyrant boss to “take this job and shove it” and, in essence, fired him.
So, how do you get a new job, knowing that the honest thing to do is to put the hell-hole you just escaped from down as a previous employer and your former boss’s name on the line in the application that’s labeled “supervisor”?
Well, let’s be real here. Sometimes honesty’s not the best policy. After all, you and your family have to eat. Right?
So, if you’re the unethical type, here are a few underhanded things you could do. Because unethical or not, you have to survive somehow.
1. Omit the workplace altogether. Yeah, it sucks. It’s not ‘the right thing to do,’ but what else do you have to lose? If you’re a married mother or grandmother, all the better. Just fill in the blanks with a homemaker and stay-at-home mom. Who’s going to question that? Yeah, you could hit a roadblock when the interviewer asks you about any experience! But again, they might give you a try! You never know! The object is to avoid a crappy report from your former boss.
2. Go to work for the competition. There’s less chance a competitor will take the word of their opponent. Also, you can sneakily give secrets away and help your new employer drive the other guy out of business. At least you’ll get a little justice!
3. Tell your new employer you were self-employed. If you were your own boss, who are they going to call for a work reference? Tell a good story, and make sure you have a good backup. Maybe you had an excellent blog and it got shut down by Google because Google made changes to its policies?
back-stabbing colleagues threatening employee with scissors and knife
4. If you have a family member or friend who owns a business, have them be a job reference for you. They can give you a good report, and your chances of getting the gig will be higher.
Hey, desperate times, desperate measures. And if you want to work again, you must get around the bully boss any way you can.
Sometimes you must get as dirty as your BB because he will be waiting on a call from a potential employer once you’re gone. Your old bully will be looking for another chance to block you from future prospects. He may even try to blacklist you.
If you disappear from his radar by omitting him and his company from any job applications, it will be harder for him to reach out and touch you.
Strict Boss: Angry upset young business woman with blank speech bubble on white on gray background. Vector illustration.
5. Hire yourself. Yes. If you can, start your own business and work like the devil to build it. Then, if you’re lucky, five years from now, when you run into your old dictator at the local gas station while he’s putting gas in his suped-up Harley or sportscar, you can thank him for inspiring you to go into business for yourself and make it. And you can smile as you watch his face contort!
There’s no guarantee that the first four are going to work and you might even get fired from your new job if your old bully boss finds out where you’re working and decides to give your new employer a call.
But at least you will have bought yourself some time and put off going broke for a little while longer.
Confidence is the most important characteristic you can ever have, not only during school to ward off bullies, but all through life. It does not matter how smart you are or how high your grades are.
You can have five PhDs and be the smartest person on the face of the earth. But if you don’t have confidence, you will not be able to effectively communicate nor interact with people. Your social/people skills will be lacking and you won’t get anywhere in life.
Whether you choose to believe this, the reality is that other people really do have control over whether we succeed or fail in life. Other people are the gatekeepers to our success and if you think otherwise, you are only fooling yourself.
I’ll give you a few examples: You can’t get that high position you want without being selected for the job by another person- the interviewer, who could be the owner of the company, an HR manager, or supervisor.
Even during school, although the vast majority of teachers and professors are honest and grade students fairly regardless of how they may feel about the individual, it’s still not unheard of for a student to receive a failing grade solely because the instructor didn’t like them. It does happen, though not often.
Confidence= great people skills= charm= great friends and connections= success!!! Great people skills will always trump smarts, good grades, high marks, and college degrees! Always!
Confidence, or lack thereof, is something that people notice right away when they meet you for the first time. When you walk into a job interview and meet your interviewer, he is going to notice right away whether you are confident in yourself and if you’re not, chances are very unlikely that you will get hired for that esteemed position that you have been coveting. The reason for this is that if you’re not confident in yourself, how then can you expect others to be confident in you?
Make no mistake about it. Confidence is the number one ingredient in all areas of your life. It’s the first trait that potential employers look for and not only potential employers but also prospective associates, prospective customers, friends, and dates. Whether or not you are confident is something that everyone looks at unless they are so low on confidence themselves that they can’t afford to be the least bit selective.
This is why you must never let a bully take away your confidence. If another person has already taken it away, you must fight like crazy to get it back. You do this by surrounding yourself with people who love you and lift you up, doing the things you enjoy and are good at, showing off your talents, taking care of yourself, and taking pride in yourself and in your appearance. Only then will you begin to see your own worth.
If a person steals your confidence, they also steal your potential for success and happy life. In short, they steal your future. Bullies are confidence thieves! Never surrender your confidence to anyone! This brings me back to Ralph Waldo Emerson. He said it best when he made this quote:
“If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.”
Make no apologies for who you are nor what you stand for. And make no apologies for any successes nor victories you’ve had. Most importantly, make no apologies for loving yourself and going after what you want and deserve.
Bullies will get jealous of your successes and victories and try to undermine them. They give you backhanded compliments, accuse you of having “freak luck,” or call you an imposter.
Also, if you’re a confident and happy person, bullies will be jealous of that too. They will accuse you of being “full of yourself,” “arrogant,” “conceited,” and other such nonsense.
Turn a deaf ear to these haters!
Many times, bullying targets, after having been bullied for so long, end up apologizing for or explaining away the beautiful parts of their personalities because they have been forced by others to believe that something really is wrong with them. If this applies to you, I want you to stop doing that! You owe no one any apologies nor explanations for being YOU.
I want you to think about this: Perceptions are often wrong, and just because others “perceive” you to be less than does not mean that you are. Accept yourself, embrace the imperfections. You know the imperfections I’m talking about- the ones you can do nothing about, because we all have them. We wouldn’t be human if we weren’t a little flawed in some way, shape, or form. Stop apologizing, stop explaining, and begin loving yourself for all that you are.
A few years ago, a thought occurred to me that even the most confident people have moments and days when they don’t feel so confident. I most certainly have them. I know where my talents are, I know all of my good qualities and bad, and I know who I am and what I want. However, I also know my limitations- it pays to know those too because confidence doesn’t mean arrogance.
If I don’t like something, I take steps to change it, and if it cannot be changed, I find ways to embrace it.
For the past decade, I have felt peace I never before knew. Yet, there are still days when I don’t feel as confident as I should.
There are times when I feel a tad insecure and nervous. There are times when I feel my old shyness trying to creep back in. After all it’s only human.
Only I refuse to give in to it. I give myself psychological pep talks to make the insecurity go away, then face the fear head-on.
Everyone has those days. So, when this happens to you, don’t toil over it. Accept it as a part of being human, and when insecurity does rear its ugly head, either use your mind to lessen the feelings or make them go away.
Even if you are a happy and confident person, there will be days when things go wrong, and there’ll be days when you just aren’t feeling it.
So, I hope you remember that just because you are having a day when you don’t feel so good, it does not mean that you are not a strong, resilient, and confident person. It just means that you are human, and just like everyone else, you will have downtimes and bad times. Just keep the faith because those times never last.
Studio shot of playful disobedient adult son in red t-shirt, covering ears with index finger and saying lalala while wanting mom get mad, standing indifferent to argue, being impolite and childish.
“Get over it!”
“Let it go!”
“Forget about it!”
How many of you have been told to do either of these? As if you could just wiggle your nose and everything is peachy king. When you’ve been abused, you cannot just let it go. Healing takes time.
The emotions you feel won’t just go away. Even if you paint a smile on your face and pretend that nothing’s wrong, these feelings will still be there, simmering under the surface, and the more you try to stuff them down and bury them, the more damage it will cause.
Understand that the emotions you’re feeling are there for a reason. They warn you that something isn’t right. Realize that the anger and hurt doesn’t disappear overnight and the people who give you that kind of response are ignorant and only re-abuse you when they demand that you “get over it.”
In order to heal and get your life back again, you must allow yourself to feel those raw emotions. No, it isn’t comfortable. No one wants to feel pain. But you must go through it to come out on the other side of it. And while you’re moving through the pain, practice self-care.
Give yourself some TLC. Have self-compassion. It’s okay to not be okay and it’s okay to baby yourself.
Take a few days off. Lounge around the house in your pajamas if you want to. Eat your favorite treat or give yourself a good, sweaty workout. Treat yourself to a spa-day, facial, new do, or a beach vacation. Your first priority is self-care, whatever it may be for you.
Last and most important, don’t shut up! Keep speaking out and standing in your truth. Self-care also means being your own advocate and if people don’t like it, too bad.
A crazy young man in a white shirt standing and screaming at a woman in a pink dress. Women don’t care and looking at the camera with a toothy smile—indoor studio shot, isolated on light brown background.
Targets should never give in to their bullies’ demands nor requests, no matter what. And they should never let their bullies talk them into anything. I know, I’m one to speak because many times, years ago, I caved in.
However, knowing what I know now, I’d take a beating before I’d give in to them because I realize that I’d more than likely have to take a beating anyway. Bullies are known for constantly changing their rules and demands to fit their needs and narratives.
Understand that bullies may give you empty promises and false incentives. They may sweet talk you, or they may threaten you with even more exclusion, more smears of your name, and more bullying.
But here’s the thing. Here’s something that targets don’t think about:
You can’t lose something you never had. Your bullies already hate you, and they already want to hurt you. So, it’s not like you can lose any ground with them because you never had it in the first place.
