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DR JOHN DEMARTINI - Updated 10 months ago
In all likelihood, at some point in your life, you've experienced the feeling of being bullied by someone.
I've regularly asked individuals in programs I've conducted, “How many of you have encountered bullying in some form, whether at work, home, school, or elsewhere?” Every hand in the room tends to go up.
I've also posed another question, “How many of you believe you may have bullied someone else?” Again, the majority if not all of the attendees tend to raise their hands.
So, when I am asked whether it is possible to completely eradicate bullying, my answer is that I don't think so. I've yet to meet anyone in my programs who hasn't felt like they've been bullied at some point in their life.
There are many people who live with the expectation that life is supposed to be all peace, harmony, and happiness. However, I believe this sets you up for a myth or fantasy of or expectation for something that doesn’t exist.
To illustrate, consider a magnet. If you try to obtain only one side of it, the positive pole without the negative pole, support without challenge, peace without war, pleasure without pain, relief without grief, or any one-sided outcome, you’re attempting to live in a dopamine-driven fantasy about how you perceive life “should” be.
When the other side eventually comes into play, as it inevitably will, you tend to be unprepared and feel hurt as a result.
An addiction to praise, pleasure, and support likely amplifies the pain experienced from criticism, conflict, and challenges.
I personally let go of those fantasies around the age of 13 when I was being bullied by a particular gang and began asking myself why I was drawing their attention. When I reflected on it, I realized that the bullying had begun soon after my parents moved us from Houston, Texas to Richmond, Texas - a move I hadn't wanted to make.
In an effort to try and help me feel happier about the move, my parents behaved in a way that was overly supportive and generous, and by giving me everything I wanted. As I often say, nature has a way of maximizing growth at the border of support and challenge. So, the more my parents tried to support me to make me "happy," the more likely I was to be bullied by others who pushed me in the opposite direction to help me grow.
Interestingly, the more over support and protection I received, the more dependent and entitled I became, and the more others tended to challenge me.
The more this latter bullying happened, the more independent, resourceful, and capable of standing on my own two feet I became. In retrospect, it was the challenging aspects of my life that fostered my growth and authenticity, and helped me refocus on living by priority.
When someone SUPPORTS you, you tend to subordinate to them and inject their values in an effort to please them. Conversely, when someone CHALLENGES you, you tend to become more independent, stand on your own two feet, and think for yourself.
Nature, society and your family have a way of ensuring you receive both support and challenge, the over-protector and the over-bullier. If you become addicted to overprotection, you will likely attract an aggressor.
Similarly, if you become addicted to constant praise and the desire for continuous support, you will likely attract individuals who criticize and challenge you.
Excessive support and praise may inflate and uplift your ego and lead to inauthenticity, while criticism and challenges can help to bring you back down to an authentic self.
As such, I don't strive to avoid pain and seek pleasure. Instead, I focus on having an objective and balanced perspective on the duality of life - embracing both sides equally.
If you expect yourself to always be nice and never mean, always kind and never cruel, always positive and never negative, always supportive and never challenging, always protective but never aggressive, you're living in a delusion.
This pursuit of one-sidedness is self-defeating. Whenever you try to repress one side of yourself and express only the other, the repressed side tends to explode, leading to a major release of all of the emotions and behaviors you’ve repressed.
I don't consider that approach productive. Instead of repressing half of yourself or trying to get rid of half of yourself in order to love yourself, I believe in loving both sides of yourself and loving both sides of others.
As I often tell individuals at the Breakthrough Experience, I'm not exclusively a nice individual or a mean individual. I am an individual with a set of values. When you support my values, I can be as pleasant as a pussycat. When you challenge my values, I can be as fierce as a tiger. I'm a human being, and I possess the capacity for both.
The world is designed to provide both support and challenge, and research indicates that people grow most when exposed to both.
It's like being an animal in a world with both prey and predator. If you had prey without a predator, you'd likely become gluttonous and lose fitness. If you had a predator without prey, you'd likely become emaciated and starve and lose fitness. However, with a balance of both prey and predator, you’ll tend to maintain just the right balance to stay agile and avoid overeating, which makes you a target.
I'm not suggesting you are to eliminate the predator or the bully. I believe the bully plays a role in the world.
As mentioned earlier, people often have an addiction to the fantasy of a life filled only with peace, kindness, and sweetness, and zero tolerance for anything else. I've observed instances where over protective parents tried to shield a child from challenges, resulting in the child being bullied by others. The more the parents protected, the more the child was targeted. This pattern repeated even when they moved to different locations.
I genuinely think it's a dynamic that occurs between two individuals, much like in a relationship. Therefore, I firmly believe that you need both support and challenge in order to grow, just as with both kindness and cruelty.
If you're overly addicted to praise, criticism will hurt you. But criticism can also break your addiction to praise You need a balance of both.
I think about my own life, and I don't go a day without experiencing both support and challenge.
When I conduct seminars, I encounter people who are indecisive, avoiding challenge, and leaning towards overprotection, and in those situations, I tend to push them to get to do the work. When on the other hand my students are diligently, autonomously working, I’m as soft and gentle as towards them a pussy cat.
Sometimes, parents can be polarized - one being overprotective and the other pushing toughness. Balancing both sides and embracing them is a wise way to parent your children. This approach can help you raise balanced children who are less likely to be seen as targets for bullying.
I believe that as you navigate through life, every goal you set will entail both support and challenge.
Every individual you interact with will bring elements of both support and challenge into your life.
Even your friends can at times turn into adversaries, and your adversaries can become friends over time.
What you perceive as terrible today might turn out to hold something terrific in the future, and conversely, what you currently find terrific might reveal its downsides in the days, weeks, months, or years to come. So, I don't subscribe to the idea that life is inherently lopsided. I firmly believe that every aspect of life has two sides to it.
I often advise people who have experienced bullying to reflect on how it might have helped them.
Instead of focusing on how it didn't help, consider the benefits.
You may have become more independent, started thinking for yourself, chosen new people to have in your life, and pursued what's truly important to you.
It may have led to a stronger, more resilient, and capable version of yourself because you developed a thicker skin and gained the skills to navigate life as a more empowered individual.
There's a clear connection between the bullying response and our addiction to one side.
Your primitive amygdala in the lower subcortical region of the brain is driven to instinctually avoid pain and impulsively seek pleasure. If you function from your subcortical amygdala mode as a survival mechanism, you tend to seek one-sided experiences, such as prey without predator, peace without war or pleasure without pain.
However, when you operate from your Executive Center in your more advanced prefrontal cortex, you are more likely to embrace both pleasure and pain in the pursuit of more balanced and true objectives.
I've discovered that when you pursue challenges that truly inspire you, you tend not to attract challenges that don't.
By tackling and embracing both sides while mitigating risks and finding solutions, you can break free from fantasies and pursue real objectives in life, making you less likely to be bullied.
Such an approach empowers you.
Any area of your life that you don’t empower, others will tend to overpower.
If you don't empower yourself intellectually, you'll be told what to think.
In business, you'll be told what to do.
In your relationship with money, you'll be told what you're worth.
In more individual relationships, you might find yourself being requested to do unfulfilling tasks.
In social circles, you'll fear rejection and be told what to believe, similar to the misinformation campaigns seen on television.
In the realm of physical health, you may be told what drugs to take or organs to remove.
In your spiritual pursuit you may be told some form of irrational dogma.
These are all forms of bullying mechanisms that can occur when you're not empowered.
Empowering your life is a key focus in my signature two-day Breakthrough Experience program. It’s where I teach the Demartini Method to help participants transform any challenging situation or relationship dynamic into a valuable teacher. I often say that if you're attracted to or even addicted to people who support you, you're likely to attract bullies to awaken you and to breakthrough your addiction.
Learning how to achieve a balance between both sides can be invaluable in helping you become stronger, more resilient, adaptable, and capable of tapping into your inner and more empowered genius.
Reflecting on my own life, I've faced numerous challenges and experienced what some may label ‘bullying’. These experiences, rather than what happened “to” me, helped to shape me into a more empowered individual.
It’s not about what happens to you; it's about your perception of it.
If you take your challenges and view them as opportunities, you can turn them into something remarkable and even feel gratitude toward those who helped toughen you up.
I acknowledge that this perspective may differ from what you hear in mainstream media, but it's based on my over 5 decades of work in human behavior.
I’d love to help you see both sides of life because trying to eliminate half of yourself or half of life will hinder your growth. It is wiser to embrace both support and challenge equally in the pursuit of a meaningful mission in life.
To sum up:
Just like a magnet, life has both its positive and negative poles, and you will require both of these equally to maximally grow and evolve.
Attempting to overly shield yourself or your loved ones from adversity or criticism can lead to unintended consequences, often drawing more challenges your way. This is a fundamental principle of nature: growth occurs at the border of support and challenge. Overprotection can breed dependency, while facing challenges can make you independent, resourceful, and authentic.
Recognizing and embracing both sides of life is the key to your personal growth and empowerment. Instead of seeking only one-sided experiences, it is wise to strive for a more objective perspective on life. It's about understanding that sometimes you are nice, and sometimes you are mean, sometimes you are kind, and sometimes you are cruel. It's about acknowledging the dual nature of your existence and learning to love, embrace and appreciate both sides of yourself and others.
Bullying, in its various forms, can serve as a powerful teacher. It can help you become more resilient, adaptable, and capable of tapping into your inner solution oriented genius. Instead of being victimized by history, you can become the master of your destiny by viewing challenges as opportunities for your individual growth.
Ultimately, living a meaningful and empowered life involves embracing both support and challenge, recognizing the inherent duality of existence, and finding a balance between these forces. By doing so, you can navigate life's complexities with wisdom, grace, and a profound understanding of the dual nature of our world.
I would love you to join the next Breakthrough Experience program, and let me show you how to use the Demartini Method to transform any challenging situation into an opportunity for personal growth. Instead of playing the victim of history, it is wiser to learn to become the master of your destiny, able to turn any challenge into an inspired opportunity for your life.
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