The Bully Food Challenge

When it comes to explaining yourself, less is always more, especially when it comes to a bully or any of their lackeys.Here’s why: First of all, explaining is weak. It gives power over to another. Explaining isn’t all it’s cracked up to be: It’s showing you have integrity at the very last minute instead of when you could have done the right thing. Either you knew what was right and failed to do it, or you didn’t know what was right because your judgment is only good after the fact. Not only is explaining weak, but feeling the need to explain is weak too. Tell me, why must you explain yourself to anybody? Do you answer to them? No, you don’t! And by doing so, you turn yourself into their inferior. Everyone has less than stellar moments or mistakes they could explain away, but that doesn’t mean they should. Instead, take responsibility for what you’ve actually done wrong, apologize sincerely and publicly commit to doing right going forward.You don’t owe others excuses and explanations. You may owe them apologies, commitments, intentions or compromises, but only a few people deserve or have the right to expect explanations from you. Those are your closest friends and family, and occasionally authority figures.It comes down to respect. The people who give you their all deserve the same from you in return. That’s it. Save your explanations for them, and still be sparing. No need to go on and on.Lastly, we explain ourselves to control others’ view of us, to gain their approval. In truth how they see us is beyond our control. If you explain to others how to treat you, they are less likely to step up…Let your actions speak for themselves, never watering them down with words. Explaining means you don’t think people get it. It’s insulting. Even your friends, don’t want to hear you explain unless they specifically ask.Let the other person’s questions be your guide. If they want to know, let them ask, and only answer your friends and family.What’s more, you don’t need them to understand your reasoning. Save your explanations for personal reflection. Write them down to get it all out of your system, and then use the information to reflect on what went well/poorly, what you might change if you could do things over, what you’re okay with regardless of others’ opinions. You can also share your excuses with a friend who is wasn’t involved for good feedback.It’s for this reason your parents and some teachers sincerely do want to hear your explanations. Not so they can excuse you, but so they can help you make better choices in the future. The thing with bullying or bullies and why you should never explain yourself to them is because you’ve probably done nothing wrong, and even if you did, it’s nothing compared to what they’ve done.In fact and explanation is a delicious morsel of bully food. Don’t feed their drama. Don’t let them trick you into lowering your status while raising theirs.In case you haven’t noticed, a classic bully move is to set you up to think you’ve wronged them, messed up, or offended others in some way. They do this to force you into explaining yourself. Resist every urge to take the bait. It’s a losing battle because it’s a trap.Let your treatment of them stand on its own. You’re not embarrassed. You’re not sorry. You’re not wrong. Most importantly you’re not ever giving them the satisfaction of watching you back peddle or walk back your decisions, as if you have anything to be guilty over when it comes to them.Explaining is effort, and it reflects your consideration and remorse. It shows you care.They don’t care about you, and you must mirror that. It’s another aspect of speaking their language. Match their investment. Give them only what they give you.

To make this point simple remember this: Words can mislead, but the body never lies.This applies to everything from a person’s body language to what they choose to do or not do.What a person does says more about them and speaks more about their feelings and intentions than anything they say.A person can say they want to help, but if they don’t do anything helpful or attempt to help, then they don’t want to help. If they say they’re sorry, but then they continue doing the same thing, they’re not so sorry after all. Apologies are nothing in word only, the action behind them what repairs harm and trust.The reverse is true too. If someone says they don’t want to sign up for a tryout at school, but then you see them at the tryouts, then something in them wants to try out more than to avoid trying out. It could their interest overrides their nerves, or it could be they want to please their parent, but you’ll see they do what they actually want, not what they say they want. **A person’s words always count, but their actions may override the words later. Of course someone who is forced to go against their words is not acting freely, and that’s not at all what I mean.Using this principle is less about how you treat others than how you treat yourself. There’s no way to hold your own around others and simultaneously accept rude behavior, and your actions will spell it out for all to see.If you accept their rudeness, you’ve communicated you’re okay with them treating you that way. If you reject their rudeness, you communicate they’ll have to change to keep you around.You must act on your wishes, not just speak them or hope others will make them come true.Actions make the words real. They are actual. By doing them, you and I send a message that sinks as it happens in real life.This is why you must follow through on whatever you say.When you back up what you say with action, you build your self-esteem, or the reputation you have with yourself. You build your reputation with others as well.You don’t have to say what you’ll do before you do it. You don’t need to explain your intentions or spell out your plans. Just do it!Sometimes speaking your intentions before taking action will motivate you and others, have more of an impact, or clarify if such actions would be acceptable to everyone concerned.However, often you don’t need to say a thing. When it comes to a bully, just act. Act in the direction of your purpose and let them figure it out.Impress upon them what you expect by demanding it with action vs telling them with words:“Leave me alone” in words is you walking off in action.“That’s rude!” becomes a snide judgey sneer that empowers you. **All people can send strong signals with their actions regardless of their strengths or weaknesses with communication, non-verbal interpretation, or understanding of emotions.“What did I ever do to you?” turns into a condescending laugh that shows you don’t really care to know.Say whatever you can with your behavior.Why? Because behaviors are what communicate to our lizard brains, the part that reacts with stress, anxiety and fear or the amygdala. You can’t tell it to calm down, you have to act calm until it believes you’re safe.Same thing when dealing with the bully. You have to act annoyed, judgmental, dismissive, unwilling, and intolerant. If you try to talk these things out with a bully, they’ll never give you the chance. They’ll see it coming a mile off that you want to corner them into a reasonable conversation about their crappy behaviors. **In times you cannot act, use words to express your expectations.In fact actions speak louder than words a partner to less is more. Why say it when you can just act on it?

When is it best to do nothing? In response to a bully, almost always is the answer, but let’s get more specific in today’s episode.Any time you feel compelled to fix, change, or make it better with the bully, stop right there because you are handing out the bully snacks in that moment.Notice whenever you feel like you MUST do something about the bully. Get good at noticing this impulse, so you can get good at resisting it.What is it about these kinds of reactions (fixing, changing, adjusting, or making it all better) that makes them interesting to a bully?Two things immediately come to my mind: The knowledge the bully gets from watching you try to win them over, and the power they get from seeing you fail.You misguidedly want to do the right thing: be fun and entertaining, or at least cooperative, to be liked.It’s tough to do nothing when you desperately want to do something to make the pain or discomfort end. And being boring, doing nothing, is SO unsatisfying in such moments.But remember boredom repels bullying and bullies, which is why it’s a bullyfood principle.Being boring in the form of doing just about nothing is today’s lesson in a nutshell.You must almost always be prepared to do just about nothing.What I really mean here is to do nothing more than make sure the bully knows you’re choosing to do nothing about them.This is where detachment comes in.Detachment is your secret power.What is it, why it matters, and how to do it so you can use it?Detachment is letting go of your attachment to a specific outcome, feeling or thing.It matters because being attracted to one thing over another alters your feelings and behaviors around it.Over attachment makes us anxious to get what we desire, and in many cases, it makes us less likely to get it.When it comes to a bully, detachment to the outcome of them leaving you alone, or being treated better by them, makes those things much more likely to happen…Why you ask…because they can only take away an outcome you clearly prefer, if you don’t care, they can’t deprive you. Not only that, but they will also have less information about what you prefer in general, and you will be more relaxed to operate effectively.When you care, you stress, you try, you fix, you change, you make it better. When you stop caring, you empower yourself to relax, and give up the fight.This is all very boring to the bully.The trick is HOW you do it.

It’s amusing to be strategic and do things nobody expects. Helping your enemy strengthens your personal standards by putting them to the test. If you can be kind to a bully, you can be kind to anyone.Helping your enemy also diminishes your self-importance and humbles you. For a minute your ego will kick and scream as you help the bully, but then it will relax, and the better part of you will win! You will call the shots over the small self that would have do damage in the form of reaction and retaliation. Showing kindness to a person you can’t stand is a practice in self-improvement.But how does kindness kill bullying, as in kill ‘em with kindness? Kindness takes down your ego, but it takes theirs down too. Here’s why:Element of surprise—confusion is one aspect of boredom. Remember boredom is either understanding a thing too well or not well enough. And bullies HATE the confusion aspect of boredom because it makes them feel powerless. They’ll never see it coming when you do something nice and will be totally confused. Kindness is also disarming because it’s difficult to be mean to someone who is kind, even for someone who prefers to be a jerk, like the bully. When you lead by example with kindness, they can either follow along and look like a sane person or double down and look like an even bigger jerk, who is has no good reason for it. Kindness is a hallmark of confidence. Think about it…who would be kind to a bully? Who can afford the risk to be kind to a bully? Someone who feels safe and secure despite them. Someone who sees they are a paper tiger. A nothing burger. Someone who feels sorry for them.The bully is not confident enough to be kind. Cruelty and disrespect, power plays and pettiness, always show weakness. They are weak, not confident.Your kindness in the face of their cruelty makes them look terrible by contrast, as long as you’re not a chump about it. Clearly being “kind” for a certain outcome, to get the bully to be nice back, or to make others see you as a good person turns you into a dancing clown because it’s transactional—you trade your self-respect for their civility. It’s manipulation to do things for others with strings attached if you’ve never discussed it. So, don’t be kind to get something. Do it because it’s who you choose to be.To be clear, your kindness is no reward to the bully. They might even perceive it as a slight, as long as you’re not sucking up to them.They don’t want your kindness, they want the bullyfood, which is your power in the form of fear, timidity, reactions, conformity, stress responses etc. Giving them those things rewards them, and you can take that reward away with kindness.Being your sweet kind self, even to them, shows them that no-one, not even big scary bullies, will keep you from being the bigger person.Being kind to a bully is one of the harshest things you can do because kindness is their kryptonite.HA!

Saying "so what" is a wonderful way to respond to an unpleasant person, who you have no energy for, and the bully surely fits that description.“So what?!” Is a slightly annoying and possibly antagonistic thing to say, so definitely don’t say it to someone you want to get along with, unless you’re joking. It’s fairly mild toward a bully, but it could push a someone who is a potential safety threat right over the line, so you need to keep threat assessment in mind before making even harmless moves like this.However, with almost every bully, the beauty of saying, “So what..?” is that it’s totally benign (harmless) but also obnoxiously hard-hitting. It goes under the radar but gets under their skin.Here’s why: "So what" is used to show disregard, contempt and challenge, but nobody thinks about it that deeply when they hear it, unless it comes from a loved one or friend.Listen carefully, this is key!! You may care an awful lot about the bully right now because of all the trouble they put you through, but they DON’T care about you at all!They care about one thing, and that’s getting the bully food.So, that means it won’t bother them at all when you say, “So what,” to them, until they realize it means you’re over them and their crap.It’s like saying ‘whatever,’ except it’s more obnoxious and dismissive, less cliche, and very versatile.Which brings me to how you should use it to your fullest advantage."So what?" is a question nobody expects an answer to, which means you can use it to spotlight a bully’s intentions, bad behavior, or damaged reputation by tagging on a few specifics.So what you’re doing is ——? So what you’re saying is ——? So what you want people to know is ——?You can also do this but make it a statement:So what? Now we all know you’re a jerk. Cool.So what? Now you’re the fashion police. Thanks for the update.Or you can use it in the classic sense as a follow-up:B: Your answer in class was so dumb! You: So what?B: Nobody here likes you. You: So, what do I care?B: You like so-and-so, and I’m going to tell them. You: So what if I do? Better than if you liked them.B: We invited you as a joke…we didn’t mean it. You: So what? Am I supposed to cry now?Use it in the same way whenever someone tells you what the bully has done or said against you.Make sure to do this in a way that includes the person if they’re being friendly, trying to give you a heads up. You do this by including them in your dismissal of the bully.However, if they are just one of the bully’s people, or they’re trying to make you feel bad, say it to them just like you would to the bully.There’s one more secret benefit to saying, ‘so what’ to rude and unpleasant people.The more you disregard and dismiss them by saying it, the more you’ll believe they deserve it. And they absolutely do.Bullies, jerks, and unpleasant rude people need feedback on their negative behaviors if they’re every going to improve. Say ’so what’ to show them exactly what you think of them and their actions.What’s better is you’ll influence yourself to disregard their behaviors and dismiss their presence in other ways.Nothing says, “No more bully food for you,” better than SO WHAT?!

When it comes to putting yourself first, we’ve got two parts to consider.Coming first and going first.Coming first (in your own mind) means choosing yourself.It comes from a place inside us. We commit to meet our own needs as much as possible.It is to prioritize yourself-your own goals, preferences, feelings, opportunities, options, and interests.Coming first ensures you know your own path.It requires self reflection and inner knowing to do that.You must believe you know what’s best for yourself and that you’re worth it.The key is to put whatever is best for you ahead of what others might prefer or choose for you.It doesn’t mean you disregard others’ needs or wishes, just that you count yourself in and factor in what matters most to you right from the start.If you have to choose between what matters to you and what matters to someone else, you would choose yourself as a default.And only put others’ wishes ahead occasionally after careful consideration: how much it matters to them and how much they matter to you.Going first is what follows committing to coming first in your own mind.It means taking whatever matters to you on the inside and bringing it out to the forefront into reality.You do this by stepping up with your actions, sense of what’s right, wrong, too little or too much, boundaries of time, space and capacity to work with others. You set limits. You set the pace. You set the direction. You put things in motion.Going first gives you the best shot at achieving your desires.It requires self determination and a willingness to risk rejection.You must believe in yourself and the power of your vulnerability.The key here is doing these things before others do them. To take the initiative.Setting the tone, pace and direction instead of waiting for others to do so.We should cover how all this relates to bullying.Bullies count on their targets to step aside, to put themselves last and to follow along vs lead.I’ll tell you what they don’t expect, is for you to know exactly what you want and to fearlessly go after it before they get the chance.This is the main thing to keep in mind: when you go first before others, you get first dibs, and you make a good impression.It shows you know your own mind (you’ve thought about what matters to you ahead of time), and you believe you deserve to be successful, because you don’t second guess yourself!Bullies target people who doubt themselves.To review: putting yourself first means you come first and you go first. To come first is a commitment to meeting your own needs instead of allowing others to decide for you, and go first is to act before others do.Start out by noticing what you think, feel, believe and what you want to do about it. Then give yourself permission to do it now without overthinking beforehand or worrying afterwards.

Speak their language.There’s a difference between bullying them back (fight) and showing them you speak their language (acceptance—you’ll mirror them, match them, be like them). The first is retaliation, which is weak and potentially dangerous. Speaking their language isn’t about becoming a bully, it’s showing the bully you know how to play their game and that you’ve got their number.The first is resorting to their methods, which is just another way of going down their path (reacting). The second, speaking their language, is making yourself relatable to them (without stooping to their level) so that they get your message (response).With a bully, you must show them your true self (the side of you who judges them as unworthy of your time, energy and attention), but you must also do it in a way that they can relate to. What does a bully relate to? What they recognize: Bullying.As we’ve discussed before, the body sends out non-verbal signals that words don’t express. And body language experts often point out that our words may or may not  be honest, but the body never lies.I want you to learn and practice the bully’s stance to get a sense of who they are and how they feel. I’d also like you to be able to use the bully stance in times when you need to communicate clearly with a bully.Bully stance: Shoulders back. Chest out. Leaning in or moving slightly forward. Head straight (no tilting) with chin and jaw jutting out a bit. Nodding with wide open eyes looking straight at them.Bullies are open and moving in, coming straight for you. Their voice volume is louder, and they end their statements with a drop tone.They do this because they are looking for victims. Anyone who backs off, leans back, looks away, tries to be nice, fails their test, and the bully will see them as a target. Any tendency to protect yourself will smell like bully food to them.The victim stance is a natural reaction, unless you’ve practiced the bully stance ahead of time.When the bully charges forward toward you, it’s a test. The way to pass is to lean into it.Body language is emotional. It comes from our emotions, and it generates emotions too. When you’re happy you smile, but when you smile you start to feel happier.The reason I remind you of this is to make sure you practice the bully stance in a place you feel safe at first.Posturing like a bully might feel very strange to you especially if your default is to go into a self-protective position around the bully. It’s okay if it feels weird or even upsetting to stand like a bully at first. That’s just the nerves of doing something new.Remember self-protective gestures may feel natural, but the bully is less likely to make you a target, if they recognize you as more like them.Also, the majority of bullies are not a physical danger to you, however, if you have assessed they could be a real safety threat in that way, that they could go past bullying into violent assault, then you must factor that into what you feel comfortable doing in response to them.Returning the bully stance back to the bully is a warning that you speak their language, it’s NOT an act of bullying. It’s a response to the situation they’ve initiated.This is exactly why you should never initiate a bully stance yourself, or you will be perceived as the bully.Just by practicing the bully’s stance, you will take on some of that body language as natural and automatic. This means you’ll express it at the right time without you having to think of it, and it will feel normal to you. Imagine doing it in response to the bully doing it first to you.

Have you ever heard the advice to just drop it or let it go?I’ve talked about Dr Claire Weekes before. She was an important pioneering doctor in the field of anxiety recovery.She said anyone could recover from disordered anxiety, excessive nervousness or panic attacks with four simple (but not always easy steps): Face, accept, float and let time pass.It’s clear to me that these are the for anti-stress responses to flight fight freeze and fawn.She described it in many ways such as mastering inactivity (doing nothing about the anxiety): not analyzing, not trying to avoid or remove it, but instead going with it by floating along above it.Others define the concept of floating as letting go, surrendering, tolerance, melting.What I want you to understand is not only what floating is, but also why it helps, what happens when you get it right and how holding on is working against you.To start out I’m going to give you an analogy: Imagine a person is hanging from a cliff. They are grasping tightly for dear life. Their arms are shaking, their hands are going numb. The only thing they can think of is bracing or falling.Now imagine the cliff this person is hanging onto is in their imagination only, or they’ve misperceived a phony threat for a real one. The cliff isn’t real. It feels real though.It seems like they need to grasp tightly or they’ll fall to their doom, but when the cliff isn’t real, only in their imagination, they don’t need to continue holding on for dear life. IN fact bracing in frozen fear is what’s keeping their fear alive and keeping them stuck in it.What happens if they let go of the imagined cliff? We know they won’t fall because there is nowhere to fall. So what happens if they release their grip, surrender, let go?They FLOAT!Think about it! With all that pressure released and all that bracing relaxed, they feel lighter than air.All they have to do is let go symbolically or metaphorically, and they will see there was nowhere to fall and it was their own fears pulling down on them the entire time.The more you want a thing, a certain outcome, a certain friendship, a certain person to stop bullying you, the more importance you’ll put on it. You’ll build up that thing to the point that it’s way up high on the edge of a cliff, and getting it requires you to dangle from that imagined cliff that.You’ll be frozen, bracing, holding on for dear life, living by conditions you cannot control and by other people’s standards.And here’s what’s worse: All the built up stress will cause you to fumble or even fail.As soon as you let go of the importance you built up, as soon as you stop caring what the bully does, says, thinks, or feels, you’ll float above the stress and rise above the problem. You’ll be able to see the solution, and you’ll care more about yourself and your standards than a particular outcome. That’s when others will start to invest in you.They way you’ll know they are investing in you is, ding ding ding! You guessed it: They will live up to YOU and YOUR expectations. They will follow your rules.You will have influence to not only stop the bully food that you dish out, but the bully food others supply will dry up too.Say to yourself, “My standards are more important than any outcome. My reality, my rules.” Then allow yourself to say something you truly think that’s different from others’ opinions, and watch how many of them insist they actually agree with you, changing their minds right there on the spot.Remember Kelly telling you, “Let go of the importance, and the threat will be revealed as phony.” You’ll feel free to act like the bully doesn’t matter, and then you’ll see them fumble and fail.I hope you have a wonderful week!

Not always meeting others’ standards doesn’t mean having low standards or no standards at all. No! What you must do is create and live by your own standards.We’ll look at what stops people from setting high standards, why standards raise your status and how to set them.People value what they invest in, and to value yourself you must invest in high standards you set.Setting high personal standards can be a challenge because it implies: personal commitment, belief, action, and facing the risk of failure.Satisfaction in the present moment is important because you’ll always be in some new present moment. It will always be now, now in the future will be the present moment then.Of course you have preferences and aspirations for better things—those things will stem from what works well right now.What accepting satisfaction in the present does is close the gap between your current status and your goals. This automatically raises your status.To do this ask yourself, what about this moment right now satisfies me? What would satisfy me right now that I could do differently? What else could I be doing right now that would be more satisfying.Finding the smallest satisfaction, or ways your dreams are already in motion, connects you to your preferred path.Give yourself permission to imagine and feel what it would be like to fully experience your preferred goals. What it would be like to meet your own standards.Often people struggle with this even more than focusing on what satisfies them now. The initial step to know what you prefer is easier for many people than allowing themselves to feel what it would be like to succeed.Why is this? Where’s the breakdown between knowing what we want and allowing ourselves to imagine having it?It’s this: We know what we want, but we don’t know exactly how we’re going to get it, so it seems impossible. We don’t want to get attached to something we have no idea how to get.Enjoy yourself and feel satisfied now, and you will bypass the thought you will only be happy when the bully buzzes off, or if your social life improves. You will collapse the difference between the perfect future and the imperfect now moment. It may feel silly like it’s just pretending, but the fact in the future moment you fantasize about is going to happen in that now moment, so you need to see it as possible now (NOT LATER).Personal standards are about wanting the best for yourself and from yourself.List what your standards are and begin achieving them NOW by stating them as a present attitude or behavior: Whatever is important to you, whatever you value, what you want to have, where you want to go, how you want to behave and be treated by others are key areas to focus on.Accountability partners: Tell your adults what your standards are so they can remind you and check in with your progress.Invest in yourself by keeping track of every satisfying WIN in your journal. A win can be a success or something you’ve learned from a failure.Remember, people resist setting high standards because they believe success lies in some imagined future, they struggle to be satisfied right now, and they don’t know how to get where they want to go. This is backward thinking. Your goals, dreams, wishes, successes start right this minute with high standards. Every moment of your life will occur in the present moment, and you will always have part of your story realized and part to be determined, but you can find satisfaction at every stage and go from there.Set one new standard today. Write it as an attitude or behavior happening in the present moment. Be satisfied by working toward the standard regardless of whether you meet it or not. Share with a trusted adult your plans and progress. Track your wins in your journal.It works! Start now.

Bully food behaviors don’t always lead to bullying, but they always limit friendship. Bully food is any behavior, thought, feeling, or belief that feeds into the cycle of bullying on your end.The list is long, and it includes: worrying, fearing, trying to impress or please, be perfect, obey the bully, avoid them, it’s thinking things like I’m not good enough or I’m so pathetic I deserve this, and feeling anxiety, sadness, bewilderment, hopelessness, self-consciousness, or anger all because of the belief that somehow it’s you who must live up to others’ standards never the other way around.Bullies sense this belief because it’s what generates all the bully food behaviors.How do you turn it around? Simple, you break the habit of self-qualifying.Self-qualifying is trying too hard to feel good enough. We don’t think we’ll measure up, so we over compensate. We over do it to make others think we’re good enough when we ourselves don’t.It’s common to worry about living up to others’ standards when it seems crucially important to do so.This is what makes people start self-qualifying. They believe they must win someone over by proving themselves, and whether it’s a potential friend or an intimidating bully, it’s easy to place excessive importance on pleasing them.The irony is what pleases others the most is our commitment to our own standards, not theirs! Sure, people want us to go along with them, but that’s not what impresses them. And people want to be impressed.Trying too hard to meet everyone else’s expectations, hoping you’ll measure up, is bully food.The belief you need to self-qualify produces every kind of bully food.The importance you place on getting a friendship going, or getting a bully to leave you alone has got to be less than the importance of living by your own standards.When you live by your standards, you don’t qualify to others, and you make them qualify to you.Think to yourself I’m good enough as long as I meet my own standards. Look for the ways you may be trying too hard to meet others’ standards, and root them out. Your attempts to make them see you differently are manipulative. You might not be correctly guessing what they really want from you. Even if you are, it’s a losing game. You’ll never root out everything they could potentially criticize, but you can root out your need to measure up to their idea of perfect.You can only live up to what the world wants if you include yourself, because the world includes you. It’s impossible to please everyone every time, but you can always satisfy yourself, which will please the ones who are important and disappoint the ones who aren’t.Disappointing the bully is what will send them packing.Stop qualifying to them and start validating yourself. This will fill you with confidence, and it will turn the tables on your dynamic with others. Instead of them screening you for how well you measure up, they’ll adjust to live up to what you expect.Not only must you stop qualifying and compensating, but you must also start screening them. Watch them. Decide if they meet your standards, and let them know when they fall short. This is listening, noticing and sharing with friends. It’s observing, assessing and judging a bully. It’s saying, “I see you, and this is how I’m going to handle you.”