This year has been a year of me doing the stuff I hadn’t wanted to do. I’ve been dealing with my own baggage, rethinking my professional decisions, reading more and quite frankly, just trying to stay out of my own way.
A lot of the books that I have been reading have been personal interest, self help and fiction. I’ve also published my own fiction short stories.
Let’s just say I’ve had a lot of time on my hands.
It’s been a few months since my last article and one of the things that I’ve wanted to discuss is how we women attack each other or feel threatened the easiest by the simplest things.
From mother daughter relationships, to peers and even random strangers. We as women are vicious and some of us are out for blood.
It’s not everyday that I see it but in this digital age I’ve found myself in more scenarios than I’ve desired. A lot of it due to miscommunications and quite frankly not understanding tone.
Some of these scenarios have been people I barely know going into attack mode and it’s not been good.
We are destroying people before they can even get their foot in doors or meet the man or make new friends.
It’s like a defense mechanism.
I feel like a lot of it has come from things that have happened to us individually and some of it due to our thoughts and experiences. It’s unfortunate but as a society we’ve all become very comfortable with being nice nasty.
You meet a new person and feel threatened then your defense mechanisms kick in. Whatever they may be. Whether being short with a person in tone or communication to your body language changing and for some, denying them the same respect as you would anyone else.
Sometimes the person doesn’t even have to say anything.
As an African American, I’ve found this more with my own kind in addition to other ethnicities outside of the stereotypical white person. It’s like we’re all conditioned to feel threatened by the presence of someone remotely more interesting or having more experiences.
I’m wondering if there is a way to introduce the topic of how we all can fit and relate without feeling threatened? It never fails and no matter how far we come in this world we are all still so far behind. The reality is that we all have work to do on ourselves.
It’s ok that you’re nice nasty but those tactics are really not a good look. It doesn’t drive inclusivity or foster an environment for growth and I don’t even want to know how business looks.
I wish we didn’t live in a world where we are constantly judged by appearances and not by what we actually know or our talents.
The one thing I will say helps me when dealing with these types of scenarios is meditation and realizing that at the end of the day, I don’t go home to anyone but myself and my family.
I have learned to keep things in perspective.
“If it’s not going to matter in 5 years, don’t spend more than 5 minutes being upset about it.” – 5 by 5 rule
We have to stop becoming so offended by another persons appearance or presence in our lives. There will be people who are better, who know better and some may even have better stuff. Like the 5 by 5 rule says “If it’s not going to matter in 5 years, don’t spend more than 5 minutes being upset about it”.
It’s doing more damage than you think.
*Please note, image via Pexels and this article may also be available on Medium.