How this book works

This book does not worry about whether you are too nice or whether bullies are nasty. Instead the basis of this book lies in human nature and trying to understand ourselves as we are. The aim is for you to see you don’t need to change, but can see things from another perspective – one that will serve you well as you head towards a successful life.

Learning how to block bullying is satisfying in the instant, when you see a change in behaviour around you, and it is a lifelong skill linked to entrepreneurial talent and comedy

If you can be who you are, as you are and be proud of yourself while other people are discombobulating – I wanted to use that word for the fun of it – around you, then this book has succeeded. If you become evangelical, a zealot or go round shoving this book down people’s throats, then reread it as you’ve missed the point: bullies bring themselves down in the end.

Let’s agree now: we’re not going to stop bullying – OK that will be a result of this – but learn to be bully-proof. This book goes to show how derogatory behaviour towards others, or bullying, can take place on an individual, societal, religious, economic or national scale.

The Underlying Truth

I recently saw a film by Simon Bridges called ‘What Happened to Robert Mugabe?’ This film suggests that bullies, if Mugabe can be called one, are insecure and ultimately bring themselves down. Look at what happened to Colonel Gaddafi and, of course, Hitler. Simon Bridges’ film about Mugabe showed how, in 1980, Zimbabwe’s new leader’s need for control and domination increased, the more he felt under threat from opposition or attack such as from South Africa, political opposition or white supremacy. He turned his bullying on his own nation and the more people fought back by voting for another president, the more Mugabe attacked them until he ultimately brought about all the signs of a dictatorship such as military parades carrying his picture with fearful citizens watching from the sidelines.

This book shows how insecure bullies are, how unaware they are of what is going on around them, how they feed on the power they have over other people, groups or nations and how they ultimately bring about their own demise. Does this remind you of your bully?

Demise

A bully’s demise is sped up when people realise they are not the underdog the bully wants them to think they are, but a threat to the bully’s position. Bullies need to be handled in a particular way. Most importantly, those who are bullied need to be able to recognise a bully and respond accordingly. The bully is an insecure individual who will lose in the end because they lack the self-awareness needed to be respected and successful.

What the Bully Wants

You met be fat or thin ugly or particularly good looking, disabled, from an ethnic minority, highly intelligent, single, elderly, religious, be rich or be poor or have a larger or smaller nose than the perceived norm. I bet you didn’t consider that while licking your wounds? Each of these characteristics brings with it a strength that the bully sees and feels threatened by. The bully makes it their business to focus on what you might be insecure about because they can’t tell you what they want. By bullying you, they are trying to cover up their weakness and pretend it is you that is wrong, not them. This strength may have evolved because you have had to fight harder to find acceptance and take less for granted than the majority.

This book was my inspiration on this theme. There is a wonderful scene in which the girl who was bullied suddenly regains her power and stops the bullying

Often the bully is insecure because they come from a minority group of some description themselves. Hitler, for example, could not be described as an Aryan German.  Bullies lack self awareness and so, possibly, pick on the self awareness of others.

We, as humans, are able to problem solve, overcome adversity and find solutions for any hardship that life throws at us. The people least able to do this are often the bullies, who see putting other people down as the only solution to their problems. Unfortunately, we often realise we are being bullied when it is too late to escape being hurt. This book tries to identify as many types of bullying as possible so you can recognise it and respond to it as soon as possible.

Recognition and Response

To stop yourself being bullied so you can focus on your own life and goals, the plan laid out in this book is to:

• Identify derogatory behaviour when it starts.
• To know that a person trying to attack you is insecure.
• To be proud of whatever it is that you are and not let anyone else make you feel wrong about it.
• To pity anyone who treats you badly, in a way that can make you feel wrong or to question yourself.
• To know this person, system or group will bring about their own downfall as they haven’t got the skills to save themselves without attacking others.
• To try and find out whatever the bully is insecure about and try to help them achieve it without hurting other people.

To do this, you might like to choose a character for yourself to work through the writing exercises in this book. These characters all have clear aims and you can give them any number of other attributes, such as the ones you feel most sensitive about or get knocked by others for possessing.

• A Lara Croft or Indiana Jones style tomb raider
• A modern day Robin Hood or Maid Marion
• A vampire slayer
• An exorcist
• A detective or amateur sleuth
• A ghost hunter
• A historian
• A political activist
• An investigative journalist
• A fiction writer

Here’s your key. You may now enter the den.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Enter your comment here...

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Email (required) (Address never made public)

Name (required)

Website

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

Notify me of new comments via email.

Notify me of new posts via email.

Δ