An energy saving guide to dealing with mean people

For anyone who has been a victim of any form of verbal abuse, be it from a passive aggressive childhood best friend, or a soul sucking bully, or a ghosting ‘true love’ or just anyone who just won’t let you breathe, we know how hard it can be to stand up for ourselves and confront these mean entities.

Even though traditionally it’s said that standing up for oneself and confronting is the best way to regain our inner peace. I beg to differ and today I will tell you exactly why.

So here’s a friendly guide to dealing with mean people: Energy Saver Edition

Step one: Awareness

A few things to understand about the nature of mean people in your life:

1.  Intention is important: As a word of caution, before we label somebody mean or a bully, we need to ask ourselves if we were in their position would we say such words or do such things. Intent to crime my friend is always a deal breaker.

2.  If they are mean to you, they won’t get you: If someone is already on the path of hurting you, none of your words or actions are gonna change how they behave. Confronting them on the top of your lungs therefore will almost be like yelling at a radio to shut up.

3.  They are not worth it: Typical advice I know! But let me defend this for you. Anyone who hurts you intentionally is not worth it because all those who realize the awesomeness that you are will never do anything to make you think about letting go of them. Fights with those who love you are different, because in such fights there is mutual respect and that’s what makes love worth it.

4.  They are dispensable: An interesting fact about bullies, you don’t need them in your life, they need you. This automatically makes such people almost like disposable diapers, once dirty; throw them out of your life. This brings me to step two.

Step 2: Express

Since you now understand that your bully is not worth your emotional outburst, let me just say that you deserve an emotional outburst to the pain you experienced nonetheless. Here are some ways to let out some steam without having to bother wasting your energy confronting a bully:

1.  Write a letter to them: Pen down everything you would have said to your bully if you had confronted them. Use as many exclamations and cuss words. Let it all out and once you are done, don’t burn it like they tell you to in the movies. Rather, use a cheap pen to write your letter, something to match their worth in your life and once you are done, drown those sheets of paper in a jar of water, turn it into a whirlpool if you are feeling fancy. And as the sheets become a mess, you can choose to throw the mess out just like you would throw them out of your life or you can make Paper Mache art from it and say ‘I turned the mess in my life into art’.

2.  Record a voice note: If you think writing is a waste of time just like confronting the bully is, an easier fix for you would be to turn your mobile data or wifi off, open any chat with your bully, record a voice note addressing them, elaborating every ‘nice’ thing you would have done to them if you were anything like them. A bonus to this trick is that you can really express your mood and tone. Just be sure to record it somewhere your family won’t hear you and to delete it right away.

3.  Art to the rescue: If you can sketch, paint, sing or rap or do anything of that sort to express your emotions for your bully, then there is nothing like it. You can even call it being productive!

The key is to get it all out before you move on to the next step and move on with your life.

Step 3: Skedaddle

Once you completely realise that the existence of such people in your life is irrelevant, you can tread on the life altering path of eliminating them from your life. Here’s how-

1.  Timing is crucial: I once had a passive aggressive childhood friend who treated me like shit but I could not chuck the said person out of my life right away. So I used the rabbit and tortoise maneuver – ‘slow and steady wins the race’. My initial steps were to gradually reduce physical and virtual contacts, then as destiny separated our life trajectories, boy have I never looked back!

2.  Delete Away: If you can delete their contact and face no consequences, Do It!

Basically anything that you can do to never see their face or hear their name again, do it right away. Trust me this is not an escape mechanism, it’s called decluttering your life.

Step 4: Let Go

Once you are done understanding, emoting and decluttering your life, the final and most important step is to truly let go. I know it can be hard to forgive and forget. For starters let’s focus on the forgetting part. You know why? Because anyone who ever hurt you did not think twice about that event as compared to the countless times you would have run that situation over and over again in your head, wishing and hoping that things could have been less painful.

So here’s something you can say to yourself when you are finally ready to let go of your pain. “I, (say your name) understand that what happened to me was unfortunate but I also understand that in life I got to be a better person by not repaying my bully with the same coin. Now as I have learnt my lessons from this incident, I promise myself to let go of the memories, the pain and the person, now and forever. Amen!”