{"id":4388,"date":"2014-03-03T21:11:54","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T03:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/?p=4388"},"modified":"2014-03-03T21:12:39","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T03:12:39","slug":"if-people-are-trying-to-bring-you-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/if-people-are-trying-to-bring-you-down\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIf People Are Trying to Bring You Down\u2026\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf people are trying to bring you down it only means that you are above them.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I spent time tonight talking to a close friend who has a teenager daughter who is being horribly bullied in school.\u00a0 Her daughter, like many teenage girls, suffers from low self-esteem.\u00a0 She thinks her body isn\u2019t thin enough, she thinks she isn\u2019t pretty enough, in general she feels like she isn\u2019t enough.\u00a0 I happen to know that her daughter reads my daily blogs and I want her daughter to know that she is beautiful, on the inside and out.\u00a0 Those bullies at her school DO NOT get to define who she is. She defines that \u2013 no one else.<\/p>\n

\u201cNever be bullied into silence.\u00a0 Never allow yourself to be made a victim.\u00a0 Accept no one\u2019s definition of your life; DEFINE YOURSELF.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I love that quote.\u00a0 And I love where it says to accept no one\u2019s definition of your life but to define yourself.\u00a0 The moment you can stop letting your view of yourself be based on what other people think is the moment you take control of your life.\u00a0 Recognize that what other people think isn\u2019t what matters. What matters is what you think of yourself.<\/p>\n

I went through some really hard years in my early 20\u2019s when my self-esteem was at an all-time low.\u00a0 I was in a destructive relationship with someone who put me down daily.\u00a0 And for a long time I believed every mean and hurtful thing he said about me.\u00a0 I had let my entire self-worth be based on what this person thought of me.\u00a0 It took many years and a lot of counseling to help me see that someone else\u2019s words don\u2019t define me.\u00a0 Who I choose to be defines me.\u00a0 How I live my life defines me.\u00a0 Not someone else\u2019s thoughts or words.\u00a0 I decide.\u00a0 I want my friends daughter to know the lesson I learned and I want her to believe me when I tell her that those bullies are not the ones who get to decide who and what you are.\u00a0 You can decide to be and do whatever you want with your life.\u00a0 You can decide if are going to live as a young lady who is beautiful because beauty comes from the inside out, not the other way around.<\/p>\n

Hearing about her situation at school makes my heart sick. It truly does.\u00a0 I have zero tolerance for people who are bullies.\u00a0 I think people who bully others are the lowest of the low.\u00a0 They are unhappy, miserable people themselves and that is why they take pleasure in trying to pull others down into misery with them.\u00a0 I have never met a happy, genuinely confident person who is a bully.\u00a0 The bullies are always the unhappy people who are totally insecure with themselves and so they make fun of others to mask their own insecurity and to draw attention away from their flaws and onto the flaws of others.\u00a0 The bottom line is that bullies are not people to put stock in what they think, do, or say.\u00a0 Don\u2019t be angry with them, feel sorry for them for being the kind of people who are so miserable that they would lash out at others.\u00a0 Then be grateful that you are nothing like them.\u00a0 Be happy that you have come to learn that you define yourself \u2013 then go out and define yourself as AMAZING because that is truly what you are.<\/p>\n

~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf people are trying to bring you down it only means that you are above them.\u201d\u00a0 I spent time tonight talking to a close friend who has a teenager daughter who is being horribly bullied in school.\u00a0 Her daughter, like many teenage girls, suffers from low self-esteem.\u00a0 She thinks her body isn\u2019t thin enough, she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3727,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[326,3259,168,1021,174,46,60,540,2119,2120,3602,3389,33,189,55,180,2269,3600,3601,289,3135,1932,496,27,519,112,3603,1525,3264],"class_list":["post-4388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abuse","tag-abusive","tag-adversity","tag-amazing","tag-anxiety","tag-attitude","tag-beautiful","tag-beauty","tag-bully","tag-bullying","tag-define","tag-destructive","tag-friend","tag-friends","tag-happiness","tag-happy","tag-insecure","tag-lash-out","tag-lif","tag-mean","tag-pretty","tag-school","tag-self-worth","tag-self-confidence","tag-self-esteem","tag-self-improvement","tag-thin","tag-unkind","tag-victim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4388"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4391,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4388\/revisions\/4391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}