What I Learned from Being Bullied
SUMMARY
Do you remember the first time you were ever bullied? Do you remember the last time your bullied?
My first day of 3rd grade, a bully named Buddy beat me up and broke my new glasses. I had never had anyone want to hurt me and so I was totally paralyzed with fear. When he let me go, I just ran away as fast as I could. My mom told me to “just turn the other cheek and kids like Buddy will leave you alone.” Only they didn’t leave me alone, so I was bullied all through school, because I would not stand up for myself or fight back.
However, as an adult I realized one day that it was no longer the mean kids who were the bullies in my life. It was the inner bullies that were beating me up. The inner bullies of fear and self-doubt…limiting beliefs and memories of my past failures. They were the inner voices telling me I wasn’t worthy…that I wasn’t good enough, smart enough, rich enough, or successful enough. Every time I would go after my dream, one of my inner bullies would jump me, and I would run away.
Finally, I realized that the reason I never seemed to be able to keep winning in my life, was because you can’t win if you won’t fight. If you are not willing to stand up and fight for your dreams, you will never be able to accomplish.
But, the moment you stand up to those inner bullies…self-doubt, fear, etc…and you take action, the “bullies” run away. Here is the truth, YOU ARE ENOUGH! And your dreams are worth fighting for. Stand up to your fears and doubts. Fight for your dreams, and you will have them.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Hi there! It’s Kevin Ward, the Founder of YESMasters Real Estate Success Training, and I want to ask you, do you remember the first time you were ever bullied? Some of you may feel like you’ve never been bullied before, and others of you can, with vivid clarity go, “I remember exactly the first day I was bullied.” For me, it was my first day of third grade, and we had just moved to a brand new school and I was so excited because it was just an opportunity to meet new kids, new town, I had a brand new pair of glasses my parents had just gotten for me, and I remember I was out on the playground there in Anson, Texas, Anson Elementary School.
A kid walked up to me I’d never seen before. He had this real thick, bushy blond hair that looked like it had been probably never combed. He just said, “Hey, wanna fight?” I had no idea how to respond to that. I had never had a kid threaten me before and I’m like, “No,” and he said, “Well, I do!” Without any warning, he just jumped me and literally started beating the crap out of me. He grabbed me and he just started punching me and pushing me, and then he grabbed me in a headlock and he’s just punching me and punching me, and I’m just totally paralyzed in fear. I had no idea what to do, how to react, or anything, and I’m taking it, and I can just remember this sense of terror like, “What’s going to happen?”
Finally, he let go, I finally got away from him, and I just remember looking down on the ground and seeing my glasses, and reaching down. And I am grabbing my brand new glasses and they were broken. I grabbed my glasses and I just ran away as fast as I could. The main thing I was afraid of after I got away was I was afraid I was going to get in trouble from my parents for breaking my glasses. They were expensive and I knew that I was afraid my parents would be mad at me for that. And when I got home, my mom, she was totally cool, I just remember my mom, she sat me on her lap and she put her arm around me, and I’m just sobbing like crazy. She told me it was okay about the glasses, they can be fixed, and it was going to be okay.
Then, she told me, “And you did the right thing to not fight back,” that’s what she told me. She said, “You just turn the other cheek and kids like Buddy will leave you alone.” Now, if you’ve ever been bullied, then you know that turning the other cheek is not the way to get kids to leave you alone, but that was what I was taught and so that’s what I did. So my whole life, all the way through school, I was bullied. I mean, from third grade on, and in third grade it was Buddy, and fourth and fifth grade it was Colin. In sixth grade, it was Greg Hughes and in seventh grade it was Santos.
Seventh and eight grade it was a guy named Dean and Santos Garcia. Santos had been my best friend in third grade, but by eighth grade, he decided I was … Well, I can’t say all the names he called me but I got bullied by him. My sophomore and junior year it was Raul. Raul was probably the most violent that he would punch me every day in the locker room and I just took it. I can remember feeling so ashamed because I couldn’t stand up for myself and I would just try to avoid him every chance I could and try to come in a different door, go out a different way, and it was horrible.
When I grew up, you would think that the bullying would stop but here’s what happened to me. What happened to me was when you approach life that way, that you can’t stand up for yourself, that you can’t fight back whenever you’re confronted, whenever there’s stuff. What happens is you get the feeling, you start believing that you’re not worth fighting for, that you’re not worth standing up for, and all of a sudden that became the way I approached life. I would always do great at stuff, I would always be successful until there was a conflict. Until there was confrontation or there was adversity, I was always awesome, and the moment there was adversity, the moment there was some conflict, I was gone. I just ran and hide.
I wasn’t willing to stand up for myself, and I always wanted to be successful. I always wanted to win in life and I would always do great. I would always start out being successful and then when something would happen, it would all seem to fall apart, and I’ve always looked at that and gone, “Why can’t I break through this?” It finally, after over 30 years later, it finally occurred to me one day, “You can’t win if you won’t fight.” I realized that the only way I was ever going to win was if I finally decided that I was worth standing up for and that I was worth fighting for. You’re worth fighting for. I want to ask you today, when was the last time you were bullied?
When was the last time that you were actually bullied? Do you remember it? I’ll bet it was more recently than you think, because most of you, in fact I did this on a Facebook livestream recently, and I was asking people, I asked them, “What were you taught about bullies?” Most of the people were taught, whenever you stand up for yourself, you fight back, they come at you, you stand up for yourself. Most of you were taught to stand up to the bullies. You were taught to stand up to bullies, especially when it was other kids, but here’s what I’m not sure about. I think most of us were not taught to stand up to the inner bullies. I believe that most people that I’ve ever met and talked to, I know they were not taught to stand up to the bullies that stood between them and their dreams.
They were in a sense taught not to fight for their dreams, not to stand up against the bullies, a fear, and see this is the biggest bullies of all. It’s not the external bullies, it’s not the mean kids in school. Those are tough, and they’re real, and it’s brutal for kids, and it can do great damage to your self worth, but the greatest bullies of all are the inner bullies, the internal bullies that make us afraid. It’s the inner bullies of fear, of self doubt, it’s the inner bullies of our limiting beliefs, our past failures, our fear of failure, and those inner bullies are the ones that we see it and we go, “Oh no!” and we run away.
We run away from our dreams because we have a dream, we want something, we think, “I can do this,” and then boom, that inner bully shows up and say:
“Who are you kidding? You’re not good enough to do that. You’re not smart enough. You don’t have enough knowledge. You’re too new, you’re too young, you’re too old, you’re not pretty enough, you don’t have the advantages, you don’t have enough experience,” right? “You can’t afford it. You’re not enough.”
It’s those inner bullies that beat us up for our whole life, and today I want to challenge you to just step back and look and say, “Do I let myself get bullied?” Not by other people, not by the tough kids at school, but do you let yourself get bullied by your fears?
Do you let your limiting beliefs and your doubts bully you and say, “I used to want that, but I just decided that wasn’t realistic.” Really? Did you decide it wasn’t realistic or did the inner bully of fear go, “You can’t have it,” and you go like, “Okay, if you say so.” We accept our limiting beliefs, we accepted our fear as reality, as final, as something we couldn’t stand up against. And I want to tell you that most of the dreams that you have in your life, the reason you don’t have them is because you let the inner bullies push you around and you said, “Okay,” and you ran away and you hid from your dreams. It’s what happened to me.
It’s happened to me for most of my life, until I finally realized what was happening and I went, “That’s it.” You are enough. You are powerful enough, you are good enough, and it is your time to stand up and fight for your dreams. Stand up against the inner bully, stand up against the fear, stand up against the limiting beliefs, stand up against those self-doubts. You’re still going to have them, but when they happen, don’t ignore them, acknowledge them and say, “I hear you. Come on,” and you kick your fear’s butt. That’s what you do.
That limiting belief you got that makes you say, “I’m not enough,” or, “I can’t afford it,” or, “It’s too late,” or, “I’m too old,” or, “I’m past my prime,” or, “I’m not tech savvy enough,” whatever those little things are, those are the inner bullies that are stopping you from having the lifestyle of your dreams. It’s time to stand up to the bullies. It’s time to take charge of your life, to fight for your dreams, and win. If this video is powerful for you, if this helps you, if you know anybody else and believe this would help, please give it a thumbs up, share it with somebody you know. It’s your time. Play to win!