Do not listen to what people say

I remember way back in the day.  It may have been middle school or something.  We were in health class and they showed us the movie The Karen Carpenter story.  Karen was a singer, alongside her brother, in the 70s or something.  One of the songs they sang was "Close to you".  Others were "Rainy Days and Mondays," "A song for you," and "We've Only Just Begun." Karen had a beautiful voice, was a talented drummer and she entered the spotlight as a teenager.

The purpose of us watching the movie was to have a discussion about eating disorders. In the movie, Karen developed an eating disorder after she heard critics call her chubby and chunky. Below is part of a documentary on her life and death. 




The reason I bring Karen up is, in dealing with different people and their issues, I have discovered that sometimes the problems people develop come from listening to other people.  I cannot say that Karen developed this eating disorder because a few people called her chunky or harped on her weight.   But I do believe that because, for whatever reason, Karen did not have a strong feeling of self-worth.  She had cracks in the foundation of how she viewed herself.  So when people threw daggers at her, they pierced her spirit and found their ways into her soul. 

Bullying has found its way as a news headline quite often recently.  Bullying is as old as those Our Gang shows with Alfalfa and Froggy and The Little Rascals.  Why is it all of a sudden that bullying starts leading to suicides and all of these campaigns to stop it?  Have the bullies become better tacticians?  Are they more evil or depraved than bullies of old?  Or are their targets living lives that are already fragile? 

In law we have this thing called the eggshell principle.  If a person is already in a fragile state and falls apart, whereas another person would not had you breached a similar duty of care, you are still liable for all of the damages you caused even when they would not have been ordinary.

You, however, should not be resigned to live an eggshell life.  The reason many folks succumb to the pressures of their naysayers is because they meet the negativity having never been fortified by positive things.  Their feelings of self-worth are already fragile.  Too many people give into becoming everything someone else spoke into their lives. Too often what people speak is not positive, affirming, or uplifting.  All of those side comments about how you look, what you have to offer, and what you cannot do resonate more with people than the good things they hear.

But in order to not be an eggshell, you have to fortify yourself from the inside out. Instead of keying in on all of the negative things people throw your way, you have to find ways to imbibe positive and reaffirming messages and people.  That way, when someone says something negative about you, you do not crumble, shatter and fall apart.

You may hear some people say: "My haters (i can't stand that term...but anway) are my motivators." That is actually true for some people, because they believe so much in themselves, that no one can tell them any differently.

In this article I wrote about Cam Newton, I detail how people dogged him before he ever stepped onto an NFL field.  Cam clearly ignored his naysayers.  That leads me to believe that he had a strong foundation and a strong sense of self-worth.

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