I was bullied in elementary school. Yep! That’s right! I’m starting this off with that confession and it took me almost two decades to finally confide in a friend who was also bullied. That’s when we realized something: I was bullied for something that WASN’T EVEN TRUE!
Okay, so read this next confession very carefully: In elementary school, some of the kids would call me a variety of terms for “stupid” and steal my homework. Did you catch something weird about that statement? Read it again word-for-word very slowly. It doesn’t make sense! I spent years sensitive to “stupid” jokes because I had convinced myself they were true, even though I was an “A/B student” and was enrolled in Honors classes! So how on Earth did I allow a bunch of snot nosed brats convince me that I was stupid!? Especially when they were using MY homework to copy from! Short answer: they were targeting my “reaction”, not my “intelligence”. They were redefining and challenging my worth.
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Take a moment to ask yourself how many times you have said something like this recently:
And the list goes on…
Now think carefully: who defined this limit for you? When we were toddlers, we believed that we were invincible and were ready to explore the world with our wobbly legs and tiny grabby hands. As we grow older, we allow friends, family, neighbors, teachers, coworkers, employers, books/magazines, and even social media to define our worth. We are better than that whenever we step back and analyze how far we have grown from when we could barely form words from our blabby baby mouths!
It requires us to “willingly” pick at our deepest vulnerabilities as if we are pouring strong disinfectant on an already painful open wound. But guess what? That’s where the healing begins. If we allow the infection of negativity to sit on our hearts and corrupt our minds, then there’s little hope for improvement. If we take a deep breath and acknowledge that we’re worth many times more than what the world had deemed us as, we develop aspiration for improvements.
This won’t be an easy task. Either sit down with a trusted friend or alone with a sheet of paper and ask yourself these questions:
From being called stupid in my youth, I grew angry and self-conscious around the kids in my class. I told myself that if I just stayed quiet and let the kids do what they wanted, I wouldn’t be targeted so much. This led to me being pushed around a lot, but I was convinced that it was “safer this way”. This in turn built up a lot of self-doubt and self-loathing that I wasn’t strong enough to protect myself.
I’m still mostly quiet and self-conscious of speaking too much in fear that I would be labeled as stupid for saying the wrong words. Now imagine my dumbstruck horror when I saw in my sophomore year that my track coach had my schedule altered to enroll me in his Public Speaking class! NOOOOOOOO!! I had NEVER been so terrified of a class elective! I took Honors classes!! I’m not exaggerating when I say that I BROKE DOWN CRYING and begged to have my schedule changed! My coach wasn’t having it. He somehow miraculously saw that I had a desire to speak but was too afraid to do it on my own.
I’m glad my schedule was changed now. My coach took me under his wing ( both in class and during track meets) and showed me that it’s okay to have my own voice. It’s okay to speak up.
Because of that small change, I had the courage to join the military. I had the courage to volunteer to lead marching cadences (which requires a very LOUD voice). I had the courage to lead training sessions. And I had the courage to stand up for moments that were unfair towards my trainees and fellow shipmates.
It takes a lot of discomfort to confront the things that hurt and angers us the most, but we can break those short chains the world has bound us to. Talk to a friend, write it down, or even message me if you wish. Let’s work towards redefining our worth! Learning from mistakes will be worth it!
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Take care,
Kyndall Bennett from Kyrabe Stories
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