How do you hold your own when you're dealing with someone who isn't very nice? How do you build self-worth (or at least not de-value yourself) when you're dealing with a "mean girl"? In this episode, I share my old strategy (spoiler alert: it was a reliable recipe for constantly devaluing myself) and I share the strategy that I take now. Learn how to keep your sense of "self" and why that builds self-worth.
TRANSCRIPT
No matter how old you are or what you do for a living or where you live. You probably have to deal with mean girls at some point you might be in grade school, you might be in high school, you might be at work, you might be dealing with the PTA.
Mean Girls: A Personal Story
This week I found myself having to deal with a mean girl in this tiny little committee that I'm dealing with. And so I thought I wanna talk about what self-worth looks like when you're dealing with a mean. Versus how I used to come to it. So I'm gonna start with a little story from when I was in elementary school.
It it's just one of those moments in time that has stuck with me. So our playground was, oh, you had to go up these ramps to get from the playgrounds to the bathrooms or to the, the classrooms. And so you weren't supposed to use a different ramp than. Class was, and then that bank of classrooms had a bathroom.
Well, I happened to be on the far side of the playground and thought, oh, I'm just going to use the other ramp and get to the nearest bathroom. So I was like, maybe third grade at most, and I went. Into this bathroom. It was like, you know, for the old girls there was tan packs machines in the ba. You know, it was like for the older girls, not for third graders, but I knew it and I thought, well, no big deal.
I'm just gonna use it and I'll get out of there real quick. So, I'm coming out, I'm washing my hands and I'm looking behind me at these two girls that even now thinking about them, they were like celebrities. They were old, they had cool clothes. They were probably wearing jordash jeans or something like that, and probably where a neon of some kind.
I mean, I was super impressed by them and I was looking at the mirror at. While I was washing my hands, and this girl looks at me and she's like, do I know you? Just like that. Just like super, super, not nice. And I just got really wide-eyed and waved at her through the mirror and she, she's like, get out of here little kid.
Get out of here. Little kid. Okay. So yes, there's that. That's a classic mean girl. I don't know why it has stuck with me this whole entire lifetime. I don't even know who that girl is. And still, even when I think about it, I still picture her older and cooler and more popular and more put together than I will ever be.
Don’t Allow Yourself to Be Mistreated
What I have learned. Through my self-worth work is what I did there. I just kept doing and doing and doing and doing. And when it comes to people that aren't nice to you, you have to learn how to not do that. So I wanna talk about this idea of self In the Worthy Project. I talk about your true self, and I talk about self as an entity like you have self.
It is a thing. It is currency. You can earn it, it can be spent. So this idea of self, who you are can be spent through energy, time, attention. You can give self away. When you give self away for too cheap, you devalue yourself. When you hold self back and keep it as a valuable thing, your value actually comes up.
How to Own Your Worth
This is from the Worthy Project, just like money. Can be earned and it can be spent, it can be saved, and it can be invested. It can be used as a type of currency. Its value can be determined by supply and demand. You build worth, specifically self worth by accumulating more self, hanging on to more self. In other words, you raise your self worth or to raise your self worth, you must claim own and possess more of your.
So what I was doing with those girls by the, the resource I was spending right there was kindness, I would say, or friendliness or even politeness. And so I had this, this thing happen this week and I noticed how different I was and that's why I. I wanna talk about this because it's not easy for me. My, my tendency is to wave in the mirror and to be friendly.
My tendency is just to shovel more effort and politeness and charm and friendliness at anybody. That's not nice to me. And what I. Have gotten in return for that are people that misread my kindness as weakness, and they're either use it to, you know, hurt me in some way or use it to elevate themselves in some weird way.
Stop People-Pleasing
So I had this thing to go to, I'm on this committee, and on this committee there is a woman. Was blatantly not nice. I was trying to help. We were all assigned little things. We were all sitting next to each other and we were at a restaurant and her food came. I wasn't eating, and so I just grabbed her stack and I said, I'll do your stack so you can eat.
And she looked at me and she said, oh, thanks so much for giving me permission to eat Meadow. I was like, whoa, okay. This is who you are. So this is a, this is where I deviate from my old patterns. Right there. Oh man, I have the knee jerk reaction. I just want her to like me. I wanna be nice. I wanna do something to say like, I'm worth knowing.
I'm worth being nice to like, if you just knew me better, maybe you'd consider me more. I don't. I just read it as feedback and go, okay, that's about her. She doesn't even know me. That's about her. So I had to go to this event. Yesterday where she was showing some of her things that she was in charge of.
And I'm in a very small room with about three people and she's in it. And I watched and she didn't look at me and she didn't smile at me and she didn't wave at me and I'm there to support her thing. And I was like, do I say hi? Should I say hi? Is the right thing to do, to say hi? Should I go be friendly?
Should I go like, give her another chance? And so a lot of what I work with clients on and myself obviously, is this idea of containing yourself, this idea of building self, self-worth. Keep that self in, don't give it away for cheap. And so I thought, okay, what if I just don't. Say hi, which to me is like so awkward and weird.
It's a tiny room. There's only three of us in there and I just didn't, and I felt all the discomfort that I typically would feel and that's what would make me compulsively reach out and be friendly. That is where I want to charm and, and be funny or you know, like smooth things over. But I thought, well, What if I hang on to my energy?
What if I hang on to what I have here and see if she meets me halfway? Oh my God. I used to never meet somebody halfway. I used to never hold myself back, you know, in the Worthy project. I say, I think something like if somebody gave me a me an inch, I'd give them a mile. Like I just always filled in all the gaps, so I never had to know really where I stood with people because I was just running.
Trying to fix everything and, and, and trying to not know really the truth about the other person. Not really have to see the feedback that I was getting from this other person. And honestly like to give them the option of not liking me. So I'm like, okay, what if I just see how she goes and I waited and I was there for about 45 minutes.
I talked to some other people and she never said hi. She never even looked at me. She's one of those people that close her eyes and looks down the nose while she's talking to people, and I just watched her do that. Every time she looked in my direction, I went, okay, lady, whatever. And then, I left and I thought, oh, you know, was that the right thing?
And, and that's where I think this idea of kindness and compassion and, and virtue and, you know, I want to be a good person. However, I have been really, really hurt. By being that good person over and over and over, I'm like, well, is silence bad? I don't know. I don't know, and I have no idea what's going to happen with this woman.
No One Else Can Determine Your Worth
What I do know is I left with my value intact. I did not start shoveling charm or attention her way to try to make her feel better. I. Within myself and really thought, okay, if I only have X amount of energy, I'm gonna spend it on the people that I really care about, the people that are meeting me, talking to me, like, you know, acting like they know me because we all know each other in that room.
And and it was an interesting thing to walk away with and I thought, oh gosh, that's so different than how I used to go. So this this mean girl thing. And I don't even know if this lady's a mean girl really, but she, she's definitely not nice, I'll put it that way. She's definitely not nice to me. But I was thinking about.
Lessons from Beth Dutton
I, God, I love Yellowstone. You guys, I love them. I love Yellowstone. I love Beth Dutton. And I was thinking about, I mean, it's not someone you totally wanna emulate, but the, the lady has worth, like, she knows her value and she is willing to fight for it. So I was thinking about that scene with, I think it's like season two, where Monica gets held at that boutique.
Accuse her of shoplifting when she really didn't shoplift and Beth comes in and just wrecks the place. But when they walked out Beth was some saying something like, do you know why they did that to you? Monica said, oh, it's because the color of my skin. She's like, no. It's because you have a kind soul and the whole world can see it, and the world hates you for it.
And I it that. That left a mark when I heard that. Like that I think has a lot more truth than people realize because I think that when you are kind and when you are polite and when you are friendly, that there are people that are bitter or not nice or in pain or struggling. Or they get some elevated sense of worth by taking you down.
Now, please understand, I'm not saying to be unkind. I'm not saying be rude. I'm not saying to be a mean girl yourself. I'm saying to withhold. Kindness, energy, attention when you're not being met with kindness, energy, and attention. And really this is about building self-worth. So you might have to just sit on your hands for a little bit and then be polite, then be kind, or at least don't go chasing after people trying to charm them.
So the name of the game with self-worth is to value yourself. And the way you value yourself is to keep self in. You don't give it away for nothing, and you don't give it away for cheap. And so really at that exhibit thing, I just was like, I'm just. My bar is I will, I will be polite. I will match the politeness.
I will match exactly where she meets me. If she says hi, I'll say hi. If she walks over to me, I'll walk towards her as well. And then just to hold myself back and watch nothing happened there. And how many zillions of times in my life I would've been the one walking over, I would've been the one, you know, praising her.
Accomplishment that day, or trying to charm my way through trying to make her like me in some way, and I would have been devaluing myself and felt less worthy by the end of that. So that's my tip. Try it out. Let me know how it goes.