“Sticks and stones will break your bones (True), but words will never hurt you.” (False) We all wish that words would never hurt us, but we all know differently.
When we don’t know what to do manage a problem, the mind makes up an answer. Thousands of years ago, we blamed thunder and lightning on Zeus getting angry. We sacrificed virgins to Neptune to quiet the rough seas from a storm.
When we don’t know how to protect our children or ourselves from the mean words of the bully, we feel powerless and so resort to making up answers like, “Just get over it. Let it roll off your back.”
The bully can be in your head, saying you are not good enough and are a failure, or in our workplace where someone is demeaning or harassing you, or in the schoolyard calling your child or grandchild names and spreading rumors.
If words aren’t supposed to hurt, then you can feel ashamed and think there is something wrong with you or your child if you are hurt. You waste time pretending you are OK when deep down that bully’s words have you doubting yourself.
When you or your child doubt yourselves, then stuck and struggling isn’t far behind.
There is a 2 step answer!
It is a 2 step process to protect yourself and your child from being hurt by the bully’s words.
1. Know how you feel in the moment so that you can respond rather than react.
2. Know what your core strengths are so that you can always believe in yourself rather than the mean words of the bully.
When you understand your feelings and teach your child to understand their feelings, then you can know how to listen and use the information your feelings are telling you to make choices that support you and your child.
When you look at all that you offer the world by defining your Talents, Abilities, and Gifts (TAGs), you will have defined your core strengths. Your TAGs are what make you the gift you are to your family, company, friends, and all you meet.
Your TAGs are your umbrella against the rain of words of the bully. Knowing your value is what protects you from believing that mean voice in your head or at the office, but instead believing in you.
Telling your child how Talented, Able and Gifted they are each day, you can TAG them for success so they have rock solid confidence that cannot be stolen from them. They will never believe the mean words of the bully, instead, they will always believe in themselves.
Great Opportunity to Help Eliminate Bullying
To teach all these principles, I wrote The Flip Side Play. The actors and the audience get to experience understanding their feelings and the expression of their TAGs in real time. Three families lives intertwine with the bully and bullied coming to a surprise resolution in the grand finale at the school tech fair with a rock band musical number.