Life After Bullying

Planning the Journey When we decided to walk the steep steps of Himalaya, we prepared for the journey. We knew we would be on our own at high altitude and there was a risk of something going wrong. The better prepared you are, the easier it will be to push through when obstacles get in the way. Creating a Strong Foundation Preparing for success involves building a strong foundation. To establish this, you need to truly know where you are today. This includes both your strengths and your weaknesses. This step can feel painful. Skipping it is tempting. Please don’t. It is crucial because it gives you the insight you need to establish a plan for creating lasting results. Once you have taken stock of where you are today, you have a great reference you can look back on later to see how far you have come. Going through the “Finding Yourself” exercise below prepares you to take ownership of your life. Do you want to stay where you are today? Or do you want to change? Owning your own life means knowing who you really are today. This gives you a strong starting place as you commit to changing your life for good. Start by writing down deeply and openly where you see yourself and your situation today. Write as much as you can right now. Later in this part of the journey, I will invite you to expand on this and acknowledge the things you are doing a good job on today. These things might be hard to see when your self-worth is low. How Do You See Yourself? When I started my journey, I saw myself as a person not worthy of life. I was afraid to interact with other people. At parties, I would hide in the kitchen being the nice girl offering to help. I was escaping to the kitchen to avoid the crowd. I saw myself as someone nobody wanted to be around, and as someone nobody wanted to hear from. I thought I couldn’t achieve any goals. I believed that I couldn’t change my situation. I was stuck being who I had become, with low self-esteem and self-worth. I thought there was nothing to do and I just had to live with this feeling. Until my healing process started with a self-help cassette tape, I thought the person I was at that time was the genuine me. I did not realize I was formed by my experience. The real and powerful me was hiding deep inside my body, not able to push through the image I had created of myself. Luckily, my negative self-image has proved not to be true. As you work through this book, you will discover much of what you think about yourself is also not true. How do you see yourself today? Write it down in the following exercise. This is your starting point. From here, you will move forward as you work through the exercises. Exercise 4: Finding Yourself Set aside at least half an hour of quiet time to do this exercise. Turn off your phone and other notifications. If you like, play relaxing music in the background. Answer the following questions as deeply and openly as you can. Please write your answers before continuing. If you are unable to write right now, make a commitment to do it as soon as possible by scheduling time for it in your calendar. Remember you don’t have to share your writing with anyone. These questions and your answers serve to make you more aware of where you are today, so you can move forward effectively. Your answers also establish a baseline to make it easier for you to recognize your inner changes as you move forward. How do you see yourself today? (Examples: Are you quiet or outgoing? Nervous, anxious, self-centered? What is your current level of self-worth? Do you feel comfortable with your body?) How do you see your situation today? (Examples: Do you hide at home, only leaving the house when you have to? How is your relationship with your family? Friends? Co-workers? How do you sleep at night? Do you share your knowledge, or do you tend to stay quiet?) Taking Responsibility Now you have identified your current situation, the next step is to commit to making changes in your beliefs, actions, and life. These changes can only come from you. You need to accept the responsibility for changing your life. Stop Allocating Blame Going through the internal struggle in my life, it was easy for me to put all the blame on my first teacher. Since those first grades, I had lacked trust in others and, even worse, in myself. I had a hard time believing in myself, struggled with anxiety, and struggled to get friends. I blamed my teacher because in my eyes she was the demon who had ruined my life. Allocating blame like that made me feel there was a good reason for my feelings and the struggle I went through. I didn’t even consider that things could be different. The fact was I didn’t really want to face reality. I was letting my inner belief, and internal fear hold me down instead of taking responsibility for my life and change. It took me almost 25 years to truly realize I had a choice. On an intellectual level, you might know change is necessary and that you are capable of it. But until you feel it in your heart, it is tough to start the transformation. Because you are reading this, I know you have reached the point where you feel the need to change. Congratulations on making this decision. There is no need to feel that mental pain anymore, to feel blocked, unable to move forward. Know that life can be full of joy and compassion if you make the shift. You might think you should have made this change long ago. The timing is not relevant. It took me many years to get to the place I am today. When I started, the long-term effect of bullying was not well known. It was hard to find self-development help, and the Internet was in its infancy. You need to know what you don’t know to find solutions. Today, even though everything seems to be available on the Internet, we still need to know what we are looking for to find answers.