Stand Strong: You Can Overcome Bullying (and Other Stuff That Keeps You Down) (14 page)

This space is a gift. I’m not kidding about that. Psychologists say people who learn to use this space wisely are generally much more successful in life than those who either ignore it or don’t use it well. This is the space where you can take control, make smart decisions, and put yourself in a position to determine your own destiny.

So when you get angry at a bully or your parents, you don’t have to lash out. You can choose instead to step into that space between feelings and actions and ask some very helpful questions, such as:

When you use the space to think about your response and to decide what is best for you over the long term, you are practicing self-awareness and self-control. This is called “response flexibility,” and it is a sign of emotional intelligence.

This is really very simple to do, and after you do it several times, it can become a habit, a very good habit. The basic idea is just to think before you act on negative feelings or emotions so that you can figure out the best response for that particular situation. If a bully gets in your face, the best response is probably not to scream back or to get physical.

Easy for me to say, right?

Sure, the easy thing to do is to respond emotionally, but is it the smartest thing to do? Will it cause you only more grief and maybe even physical pain? Would the smarter response be to calmly talk to the bully to defuse the situation? Or would it be smarter to get a safe distance from the bully as quickly as possible?

Every situation is unique, so there is no one answer regarding
the best response. But by mentally stepping into the space between your feelings and your action, you can better assess the situation, let go of the emotion, and more logically figure out your best options.

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Here’s something to consider: your negative emotions can be like bullies inside you. They try to provoke a response from you that may not be in your best interest. So if you simply do what those bad feelings stir you to do, you are just giving in to another bully in your life.

This thought occurred to me after I read an e-mail sent to my website by Dominic, who said he was fifteen years old and lived in Southeast Asia. When I read his story, I saw that at first Dominic let negative emotions bully him into doing things that weren’t in his best interest. He gave in to that inner bully and it didn’t work out very well for him, but later, when he thought about his response, he did something that helped him a lot.

When Dominic was in the ninth grade, he liked a girl and thought she liked him too. Then he found out she liked another guy who was a friend of Dominic’s. That made him feel angry and depressed, so he shut both of them out of his life.

Dominic felt even worse after the girl and his friend became
a couple. He would see them being affectionate at school and become even more depressed and angry. It didn’t help that other classmates knew he’d liked the girl and they talked about how he’d lost her to his friend. That made Dominic feel like a failure, he said.

“I didn’t have anyone. I cried from time to time, my grades went downhill and I dulled my pain with alcohol,” he wrote. “I started to believe what people said about me, that I was a failure and not worthy to live, that I should just die, disappear, go away.”

Dominic couldn’t help feeling sad about his situation, but he let his feelings bully him into acting in a self-destructive way, didn’t he? He said in his e-mail that he first realized there were more positive ways to respond after watching one of my videos on YouTube. He saw that I’d overcome my emotional inner bullies brought on by my disabilities and made the decision to lead a more positive life. Dominic began changing his response to his own feelings and changed his life in the process.

One day, after the school prom, he and the girl and her boyfriend patched things up by apologizing to each other. They forgave each other and closed the door on what had happened in the past so they could be friends again.

“Now, I believe that God has a plan for each and every one of us, and that He is truly the way, the truth, and the life,” Dominic wrote.

To help you beat the emotional bullies that can push you to
do things you may regret, try using this simple step-by-step process the next time negative feelings hit you.

I’ve worked at this process myself, especially after I married Kanae and became a father. I want to be a good example to our son. I use my father and my uncle Batta as my guides when trying to figure out a better way to respond. They are very thoughtful men and good role models for me. I’ve been in business meetings with them where I’ve seen them control their responses in emotional situations. They always analyze things that affect their lives before acting on them.

I want to be as mature as they are in that regard. Now that I have a family to look after, I feel more mature and I like that feeling. I have a better sense of who I am, the person I want to be, and what I want to do with my life. I am not so inclined to just get things off my chest or to vent—and that’s good for everyone in my life.

More and more I realize that the negative things that happen
to us don’t have to rob us of our peace or our joy. You and I can make the decision to step into that place where we recognize our negative emotions, examine why we are feeling the way we feel, come up with positive responses, and then do our best to be our best.

I’ve matured a lot emotionally in the last few years. I feel like I’m more aware of the triggers and sources of my feelings, and hopefully, I’m more thoughtful in how I respond to them. I realize that while I can’t control how I feel, I can control how I act.

Another key to living with emotional intelligence is never to suppress negative feelings so that over time they simmer until they explode. That’s not healthy at all. You can manage your negative feelings in the moment, but sooner rather than later you need to address them and find a way to release the negative energy. I give it up to God. Instead of responding emotionally, you can ask Him to help you respond spiritually. Pray for those who have hurt you, knowing that God is just and that if you do your best, He will do the rest.

As a child, I couldn’t understand why God brought me into the world without arms and legs. I’d always been told God didn’t make mistakes and He loved all of His children, but I couldn’t reconcile that with my disabilities.

For years I prayed for arms and legs and, if not for them, at least something that would help me understand God’s plan for me. I turned to the Bible for answers, and one day I found a passage, John 9:1–3, that truly changed my life.

It said Jesus came upon a man who’d been born blind. One of the disciples asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” That same question had been dogging me. Had my parents done something to make God angry? Was I born without limbs as their punishment? Or was I being punished for some reason?

When I read the next part of the passage, I got the chills. Actually, it floored me. It was as if I, too, had been blind but then made to see. It quotes Jesus answering the disciples’
question about the blind man: “ ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.’ ”

From that moment on, I believed that God had created me for a purpose. I didn’t fully understand what that purpose might be, but I had faith that He planned one day either to give me a miracle or to somehow perform miracles through me.

Finding that passage on the blind man really changed my life by changing my attitude. So when I began having problems with bullies, I again looked to the Bible for answers. I found two particular passages that seemed to offer a couple of different responses to bullying.

There is the familiar story in which Jesus said we should turn the other cheek when confronted with evil people trying to hurt us. But then Jesus didn’t exactly do that in John 18:19–23 when a guard slapped Him in the face in response to His defiance of the high priest.

After being slapped, Jesus responded with even more defiance: “If I said something wrong … testify as to what is wrong. But if I spoke the truth, why did you strike me?”