Have you ever been invited to a party or get together and felt like an absolute outcast? Or been in a conversation where you are totally ignored, spoken over or the reason why everyone around you is laughing for no apparent reason? Then you dear friend have experienced the wrath of social bullies.
As I grew older and weirder, I was exposed to other forms of bullying. Super subtle in its execution, but horrific in its effect. Social bullying basically involves:
“The people, who perceive themselves to be on top of the food chain in our social circles. Primary characteristics include: considering other people’s failures as their success, finding creative ways to expose people’s weaknesses, gossip, slander, alienation and isolation of their victims”
Here’s how I overcame these horrible encounters…and how you can too.
Concerning your failures
Please become comfortable with the fact that failure is an inevitable fact. Nobody is immune from it. Whether it is in your career, relationship or family life. Sometimes social bullies will try to exploit your failures to secure social capital. When this happens, I want to say one thing
Rest assured that they have failed too!
Also, people in your company are not as oblivious to life as you think they are. Exploiting your failures, really only makes them look bad, not you! Cheer up!
Concerning your weaknesses
Failure and weaknesses are closely linked. Our weaknesses can generally do two things, propel failure or propel success. In this case, your weaknesses will be rigorously categorized according to what you wear, what you do, your hair, who you date and as you get older your pay grade will become a determining factor too.
You need to learn to become comfortable in your own skin, and if you’re not, please start. Learn to like yourself enough to block out the noise of people who are trying to convince others not to. Funnily enough, the only reason why they’re exposing you, is because you’re their weakness.
The Gossip
Those who gossip to you, gossip about you
“What Susie said about Sally, says more about Susie than it does about Sally”.
Universally, everyone knows this. It’s just in real-time people generally find gossip pleasurable, but over time, or the very next day, motives are questioned and intensely analyzed.Gossip has a mythical principle, but slander is head on assaulting character. I usually nip this in the bud as soon as it happens. Confront the issue and then try to find a way to resolve the matter. Anything else will just aggravate it, so learn to sort things out then let it ago.
The Alienation and Isolation
Great! This presents you with the opportunity to do some housekeeping! Weed out the people who think you’re not good enough and embrace those who do. You don’t get to be the social butterfly, you don’t need to be a crowd pleaser.
The world needs you to be you!