How to Positively Get Over People Who Hurt you

I have always tried to be as confident as I can be throughout my life - not with ease however and it did not come naturally as inside I was a trembling shy little girl and in public I tried to come across as strong independent and confident. That was me feeding my ego and trying to become someone I was not.

As I have grown up through the years - I started moulding into the confident person I had tried so hard to become but this happened gracefully and naturally because I learned to accept and love who I am. I am proud of how far I have come.  But even when we reach this stage in our lives - when we learn to love and accept ourselves - there will still be obstacles to overcome in this regard - obstacles that test your confidence in knowing who you are, that make you rethink the choices you have made and ways you see yourself, that test your confidence in yourself. Lately I have learned a lot of new lessons in this area of my life.

One of these obstacles relate to people who put you down - indirectly by using gossip or slander - or directly by telling you the negative things that they think of you, or maybe even in a passive way - by treating you less than others but without directly or indirectly saying so.

In the past it used to really get me down – when situations like this arise we can’t understand what we have done wrong and also how we could have allowed people like this into our lives in the first place. It is a feeling of helplessness and rejection and forces you to look at yourself to try and find the faults and flaws that you apparently have. I mean if others say it is so – then maybe it is so, right? It feels damaging.  

I thought about how I could deal with things like this in a more positive way. In the past I would have been really upset, most probably would have cried and tried to stand up for myself and explain myself - which only feeds the fire. Today though, I have not had an inkling of an urge to want to do that. Why? Because I have learned that by focusing my energy on something that does not feel good only makes it worse.

That all makes sense but what I also realized was that by suppressing how I feel about the situation would also make me feel bad on the inside and if that happens it tends to fester.

How then do we get over hindrances like this in our lives without becoming egotistical about it and without losing touch with who we are, and at the same time how do we overcome this feeling of rejection and hurt?

The first step would be to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and by doing that begin to understand that everyone wants to be happy and for some people to feel good about themselves they make others look bad. This is tremendously unsound but remains one of the ways that some people use to feel good about themselves.

This brings up another side of the coin though. From a Buddhist perspective for example, it is our egos that have been bruised. People can't injure “you” with words, they can only injure your ego. That cuts both ways… we need to understand that their behaviour is not about us, it's about them. It's about their ego trying to preserve and enhance itself. It does that by diminishing others to make itself feel more important and to make itself "right" at all costs.

We have to recognize that, bless them on their way, forgive and be done with it. Free yourself to move on and to take up your own path.

  

I come back to the point again of the power of positivity and how you should not let negativity rule any part of your life. Yes, these people are out there and there will always be people that will try to bring negativity into your life. The way to overcome this feeling through positivity is to focus on the people that do love and care for you. Focus on them, don’t forget about them – embrace those people in your life. Shift your focus.

In the end what matters is that you know who you are.  If you have clear understanding of who you really are, another person’s opinion should really not affect you. Everyone is a work in progress – we all have our faults and our strengths. Keep working on yourself to be the best version of you, don’t let others try to bring you down, don’t be ashamed of who you are and how far you have come or have got to go.

I will end this with the words of Brenda Russell: “In an ideal world, on an Ideal day, we could care for each other, in an ideal way, when they open the door, I would be the first, to start loving each other, in an ideal world...”