Let’s talk about what to do when someone treats you badly.
We have all been there… you find ourselves in a situation with someone and it doesn’t feel good. They do something that rubs you wrong, they act out in a way that feels like it cuts to the core, they disappoint, disrespect, or betray you in some way.
Their actions, that you experience as negative, activated your amygdala and set you on a neuro pathway of fight or flight. Often you can feel the adrenaline rush or your heart rate accelerate. You have been wronged and your mind wants validation for the pain you are experiencing. Whether you try to find validation from the person who wronged you in the moment or you try to find it from other people after the fact, it feels like you can’t let it go.
Your amygdala keeps tossing out thoughts, replaying just how wrong they were. This pattern of thinking keeps you tethered to the pain, leaving you feeling even more upset, frustrated, angry, or sad.
Focusing on their wrongness will never make you feel right. No amount of validation for your suffering or validation for how wrong they are will right the wrong that occurred.
So then the question is what do you do to alleviate the pain that they left you sitting in?
Well understanding what’s happening in your mind and emotional heart help a lot because if gifts you the ability to focus where you have power.
So let’s go through some steps that help you focus where you have power.
4 Steps That Help You Focus Where You Have Power
Step 1: The Power To Shift Your Perspective
It’s time to move your focus from them to your own heart and story. As painful as it might be at first to let go of the drive to validate how wrong they are, it will change the game for you.
You have to quiet down your amygdala and start to activate your prefrontal cortex. There are endless ways to do this, but they all happen when you shift your perspective and focus back on your own heart and story. That shift happens one thought and one feeling at a time.
Meditation is great for this. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but it gives your brain the break it needs to unplug from their story or narrative that has been set on repeat. It also offers your mind time to be free of resistance. This break helps you plug back into your own heart and consciousness.
If you can’t settle into mediation, try taking some time to do a simple breathing exercise to help slow everything down. You can try square breathing. Take a deep breath for 4 counts, hold for four counts, exhale for 4 counts, and hold for four counts. This can help you reset your mind. That breath also helps you focus where you have power, within your own being.
Setting your mind to an optimistic outlook activates your prefrontal cortex and quiets down that amygdala. You can give your brain a break by looking for things that are right in your present moment. This sets your mind into an optimistic mode. Looking back on something from your Optimism Practices is also super powerful.
We covered three of the optimism practices last week; Gratitude, Positive Cellular Memories, and Divine Winks of Love. <<You can link over to there here.>> Any of these are perfect tools to help you shift focus. They all help you get into a place where you can think from your prefrontal cortex from an optimistic perspective.
Watching each of your thoughts with curiosity and consciously reaching for thoughts that feel incrementally better can really help. Here are some that might help:
- It’s less about them and more about my heart.
- In this moment I am ok.
- I have the ability to focus where I have the power to change.
- I am the author of my story and the main character living it all into existence.
- Nothing they do changes who I am, my worth, my value or my truth.
It doesn’t matter how many time you have to keep resetting your thinking and perspective just keep bringing it home to your own heart and story.
Step 2: The Power To Determine Who You Want To Be
This one seems straightforward but frequently it’s a missed opportunity. Let’s be honest, their negative actions have a tendency to morph you into someone you don’t really want to be. You don’t want to be reactive, someone who feels like they have to cut people out of the picture, or someone who is angry and can’t let go. You don’t want to be someone who regurgitates suffering or feels stuck in something that doesn’t feel good. You don’t want to carry around anger or worse let it turn you into someone resentful and bitter.
The good news is that you have the power to determine who you are and how you feel. <<You can link over to a blog post and video dedicated to that very topic here. >>
So after you have shifted your perspective back to your own heart and story, you then get to bring some conscious awareness in and ask yourself who you want to be and how you want to feel.
It’s in moments like this that you get to exercise and define your character. With every thought you think, you’re creating ownership for who are. So it’s valuable to take the time and make sure your thoughts are aligned with who you really want to be and where you want to go in your life.
Just bring some curiosity into where you are and then let the contrast make room for you to find out who you want to be and where you want to go.
If you feel bitterness, then ask yourself if you want to be bitter. Is that who I want to be? Do I want to allow what they did to shift part of me into perpetual bitterness? What would I rather hold in that place instead? Sweetness, happiness, contentment… are all antonyms to bitterness… would you rather hold space to be those things? Remember with every thought that you think you are creating your own reality. So you want to make sure you are giving more mental airtime to what you want rather then what you don’t want.
You may feel victimized by what they did to you; ask yourself if that is who you want to be? If you stay focused on them you are hooked into that dynamic. When you focus back to your heart you get to decide what might fit you better. Resilient, capable, strong, sure of my truth… those all might feel better to you because they are in more alignment with who you truly are. So focusing there and building thoughts around those feelings helps you bring it back to your heart and story.
So just stay curious about how you’re feeling and remember that you don’t have to take direction from the feelings. Instead you can use them as indicators help you figure all this out for yourself.
What they did doesn’t have to determine how you feel, who you are, or whom you evolve into moving forward.
Step 3: The Power To Relook At The Big Picture
Once you shift your perspective back to your own heart and you start to bring some conscious awareness to who you want to be and how you want to feel, you can feel the power flowing back into your being.
There is less resistance and less agitation because you are more focused where you have power then to where you don’t. Any information from the situation that remains, feels more neutral from this place of inner power.
It’s from this more neutral place that you can relook at the big picture. Some valuable things to keep in mind when doing this are:
- Make sure you are looking at the big picture. This will help you not focus on the other person too much.
- Look through the filter of grace. Grace being the disposition or act or of kindness, consideration, or compassion.
- Take capacity of heart into consideration for all parties involved. This will help you figure out how best to move forward.
When you keep those things in mind as you relook at the big picture, you usually find even more peace about where you are. When you grant yourself the grace to be where you are, that kindness, consideration and compassion chips away at the self-judgment and diminishes blame. When you can look at yourself in that way, you can start to look at the other people involved in the same way. You can grant them the grace to be who they are and where they are in their lives.
From that place you can start to understand that we all move from our greatest capacity of heart in any given moment. And while you may wish, want, or expect them to act from a broader capacity. But here is the thing… if they aren’t, then for whatever reason, they don’t have it in them and it’s not personal… it’s just where their capacity is at the time.
This situation has been an opportunity for you to expand your own capacity of heart.
Through this whole situation you have stepped more deeply into your truth. You have made the commitment to focus on your own heart. You have broken a cycle of focusing where you don’t have power and instead shifted to a higher place of power within yourself. All of that expands your capacity of heart.
You can also start to understand that there is nothing you can do or say or be to change someone else’s capacity of heart. This helps you understand better how to move forward. I know there will be a part of you that will want the other person to make it right… to apologize or fix it for you. Unfortunately their capacity of heart may never allow them the ability to do that. How you move forward has to reflect your capacity of heart not theirs. Asking or expecting them to do something out side of their capacity sets you up for more suffering so make sure you are focused on your own capacity of heart, because that’s where you have the power.
Step 4: The Power To Forgive
Forgiveness is an art of allowing. Forgiveness untethers a negate cord you have attached to anther person. It doesn’t have as much to do with the other person as it does with your own heart. Forgiving them doesn’t make what they did right or grant your approval. Rather it releases you from being bound to them or their actions.
One of my favorite ways to forgive is by creating a quiet moment, closing my eyes and visualizing the other person in front of me. In this visualization I see them more from their divinity then their humanity. Their humanity is what created the pain I experienced not their divine truth.
In this vision they don’t have the power to be animated or interact with me unless it’s of my choosing. When I am ready I give them a heart-to-heart hug. Then I tell them that I forgive them for any suffering they caused me and I release them to be whomever they are to be out in the world.
Then I forgive myself for any part I played in the situation and I release myself to be who I would like to be out in the world. I hold the embrace for as long as I need to hold it to feel the release of the negative cord between us.
You never have to tell them you forgave them… it probably isn’t in their capacity of heart to hear it anyway. But in the forgiveness you allow your heart to be free and you allow them to be where they are without attachment to any kind of outcome, hence the art of allowing.
Remember that you always have the ability to focus where you have power. No matter what the other person did or who they are in your life you get to determine who you are, how you feel, and how you move forward.
If you are reading this I want you to know that I believe in your power, in your ability to focus and your ability keep expanding your capacity of heart. Owning your power when someone treats you badly takes courage and I want you are not alone as you do it.
I am wrapping you in so much love and support.
