Stop Being a Bully

The following is a conversation we had at a recent bootcamp about bullying yourself. This will give you some sort of an idea of what we do during bootcamps.

David: Are you a bully?

Do you enjoy constantly teasing people? Do you like to sit there and push people through the cootie door?

You remember the cootie door from grade school – you picked a door and if someone walked through it, they had cooties for the whole day.

Do you remember cootie shots? The only form of immunization…

But the question remains: are you a bully?

Most of us adults are no longer bullies to other people. We stopped being bullies to others a long time ago, except many of us are still bullies with one specific person. And I’m not talking about your younger sibling.

Many of us are bullies to ourselves. We are own worst enemies.

Do you tend to look only at the negative things about yourself and are you constantly making fun of yourself cruelly and making excuses? You’re being a bully.

I bully myself about my chicken legs, and I constantly use them as an excuse: “man, I don’t want to put those pants on, they’ll make my legs look too skinny. I’m not wearing those.”

We are always our own worst enemies. We love to make fun of ourselves.

You’re sitting here laughing, what are some ways that you bully yourself?

Client: Well, I take myself way too seriously. In my line of work, it’s important to anticipate what people are going to say, so I always expect big things out of myself when I’m in a conversation with a woman.

I’m never listening to what the other person is saying, but more trying to out-do that person. Then I wind up not listening to them at all, and they lose interest. That’s what I bully myself about.

David: Rey, how do you bully yourself?

Rey: I bully myself about everything! “You’re not good enough, you’re not being loud enough, you’re not being interesting enough, you don’t have your personality out,” everything like that. “You’re not letting yourself out, you’re too stiff!”

David: And by doing that, Rey, you don’t ever let yourself out because you’re constantly thinking about it.

Every time you approach a woman, you’ve got that mindset, and then of course, you become that.

What about you?

Daniel: I guess I bully myself when I don’t meet the expectations I have for myself.

David: Like how?

Daniel: I bully myself with the typical monkey chatter: “I’m not going to be able to escalate intimacy in a conversation!” I’m also always thinking about the end result and having that fear of what to say next or how to transition to the next topic.

David: It’s interesting. You think so much that your monkey chatter is saying, “you can’t escalate, Daniel, you can’t escalate,” and then, because you worried so much about it, you can’t.

The only escalating we should think about is the escalators we ride on in the stores. Women will get sexually turned on to you by you being charming, real and in the moment. She’ll start to connect with you.

‘Sexual escalation’ is a term that men think they need to be so aware of, but in reality, it will just happen naturally if you’re strong, powerful, and you don’t think. The real sexy side of you is the side that isn’t thinking about everything. It’s the side of you that just lives and responds to things in life. The side of you that goes with the moment, and goes with the flow.

Our bully is unbelievable. We love to bully ourselves constantly. We are constantly ripping ourselves apart. We’re trying so hard to be perfect and say the ‘right thing.’

In reality, nothing in life is perfect. Your imperfections are the things you need to embrace and learn to love. If you don’t embrace and love your own imperfections, nobody else ever will.

I’m an OCDer. I’m looking to buy a house right now, which you all know, and I am having so much trouble. I just cannot pull the plug. I bully myself in so many different decisions that I can’t even think of, yet everything else I do in life is very simple and easy.

We all have our things that we need to work on. You need to embrace those imperfections, make fun of yourself and have fun with it.

We did that exercise last night where we made fun of ourselves and it was a blast. We all made fun of our dumb little faults.

You got dressed up in clothes you thought looked great, and then you made fun of yourself for being some big metrosexual.

But in reality, you look like a guy that is nicely dressed and that women would notice. You’re thinking, oh man, I can’t pull this off, I can’t look sexy – but you do.

That’s how we stop bullying ourselves.