Hi everyone, welcome back! Last week instead of examining another belief, I examined what ‘practicing mindfulness’ looks like and in the process pointed out that when we learn to practice mindfulness, the biggest thing we learn is to respond instead of reacting to any situation or person. However, this approach could be misunderstood as ‘allowing people to walk all over you’ especially if this is a difficult person that you are dealing with. Therefore, this week I would like to take a step further and examine who exactly is responsible when you are in a situation where someone is mistreating you and how is it that you can use mindfulness to address it.
Belief: Since I am trying to be more mindful, I should let people walk all over me.
Absolutely NOT!! No human being regardless of where they come from, how much they earn, what their job title is, how amazingly intelligent or beautiful they are should ever be allowed to walk all over anyone else!! Literally no one should ever be given the right to walk all over any other person – period! However, interestingly, if you ever feel that you are or ever have been in this situation and feel that another person is/was walking all over you or mistreating you, always remember that you play a very important role in this situation and also that it’s you who has given them the permission to do so!! Yes it is you!! And you give them permission because you choose to not speak up for yourself. You choose to not protect your own self. You choose to believe that somehow you deserve to be walked all-over. You choose to believe that somehow this other human is more powerful and important than you are. Most importantly, you choose fear of that person over love for your own self!! And that’s right there is the reason why you let anyone treat you badly.
I know folks, the truth hurts especially if you are that person who is realizing this right this moment as you are reading this blog! You may feel angry at this very moment may be because you don’t agree with me. Or you feel guilty for not standing up for yourself when you were mistreated by someone in the past. Or you may feel uplifted now that you know you play a very important role in how people treat you! There may be a variety of feelings you may be feeling and it’s completely ok to feel them because you are human! But like I always say, the ultimate choice is yours – the reader of this blog and if there is something you don’t quite agree with, let it be. My experience of life has been that when you are ready to learn something, the wisdom will appear! So, if you are not ready this time, read something that resonates with you.
Alright, now let’s explore how is it that you give people permission to mistreat you in the first place. So let’s imagine you have a very smart colleague or a boss or a spouse or anyone else for that matter with some kind of authority. And if this colleague or boss or spouse is the person who is not treating you with respect, have you examined your own belief system and identified that belief which tells you how all these people that I just mentioned are more important than you are? Have you looked at that belief which tells you how much better these people of authority are as compared to you? That belief that tells you that you will never be better than them because they are superior to you just by virtue of the ‘roles that they play in your life’!! Dear people, if I could see you right now, I would just give you a big hug because these are exactly the beliefs and may be a few others like these that hold you back from speaking up for yourself! These are the kinds of beliefs that do not let you stop the people who mistreat you right in their tracks. These are the kinds of beliefs that allow you to be mistreated by bosses or colleagues or anyone else for that matter. These are the kinds of beliefs that give you permission to stay in an abusive personal relationship. These are the beliefs that infuse your minds with so much fear – fear about what would happen if you did speak up, fear about losing your job, fear about ending up being lonely without a personal relationship, fear about not having what it takes to endure whatever happens after you speak up!! And the kind of culture I come from, where women are considered inferior to men, women are especially vulnerable to these kinds of beliefs and therefore end up in these kinds of situations more often than men and to my amazement it doesn’t change much even if these women may now be living outside of their country!! A humans beliefs follow them wherever they go until they take the time to examine them.
Let me tell you one thing folks – from my own example of not choosing to stand up several times in the past vs. standing up for myself for the first time recently and speaking up when I was being mistreated at work; a lot of people in this world have such low Emotional Intelligence (EI) that so many times they don’t even realize that they are mistreating someone! People like these are completely clueless about others feelings because they have never taken the time to acknowledge and feel their own! However, other times, there are people in this world who are real bullies and they know exactly what they are doing and will continue to prey upon you until you muster the courage to stand up for yourself! And it’s not just the adults who belong in this category, even the kids at school end up being bullies! And such adults/kids feel very powerless in their own environments which is why they like to bully someone else which gives them a sense of being powerful! However, regardless of the category the person who is mistreating you belongs to, it’s you who is responsible for protecting your own self, for standing up for yourself, for asking the person mistreating to stop but you can only do that if you feel inside that you are worth standing up for, you are worth protecting! And if you are one of those people who mistreats yourself, criticizes yourself, finds faults with yourself, then, you are more than likely to allow someone else to do the same to you! So the bottom line is, if you really want people to respect you then respect yourself first. If you really want other people to love you then love yourself first. If you really want other people to accept you then accept yourself first. And when you are able to love yourself and accept yourself, you will expect the same from others that you work with, interact with, and are in personal relationships with. And when others know that about you, they will not dare mistreat you and even if sometimes they do, you by practicing mindfulness, will gently but very firmly be able to remind them that you deserve better!
I have shared this poem on this blog before but I would like to share it again because I think it’s very appropriate for this week’s topic.
It doesn’t matter whether others believe in you
What matters is whether you believe in yourself
It doesn’t matter whether others trust you
What matters is whether you trust yourself
It doesn’t matter whether others accept you
What matters is whether you accept yourself
It doesn’t matter what others think of you
What matters is what you think of yourself
It doesn’t matter whether others love you
What matters is whether you love yourself
This life belongs to you, you are the most important character in it
Even if you have not lived this way before
You can make this choice today
Don’t give away your power to another human
Who is exactly like you are because we are all the same
We come from the same source and go back to the same source
So start believing in yourself, trusting yourself, accepting yourself and loving yourself
And no matter how much fear you feel when you are trying to take that first step
Keep trying because you will get better at it
And gradually one day, you will come to realize that you by practicing this,
You are already LIVING FEARLESSLY!
And as always, feel free to leave a comment, if you feel like leaving one. And until next Friday, live life 🙂
