(dramatic crescendo)
- Hello, Believe Nation!
Today we're going to talk about how you can handle bullying.
Rule number one is my personal favorite,
and I'd love to know which one you guys like the best.
As always guys, as you're watching the clips,
and you hear somebody say something that
really resonates with you, please leave it
in the comments below, and put quotes around it,
so other people can be inspired as well.
Also when you write it down, it's much more likely
to stick with yourself, too.
Enjoy.
(upbeat music)
- I've become an expert on this,
because I was one of those being bullied, (laughs),
and most people wouldn't think that about me,
because I'm six seven, but I was actually
always the smallest kid in my class.
Part of what kept me going,
was the vision in my mind that said,
they may do this to me today, but someday
my life will be more.
I won't be the person that people verbally,
or physically abuse.
And I remember being in high school,
and envisioning some day I was going to become
this successful person, and I was going to make a difference,
and I'd become a financially successful.
The fact that we had no money, was one of the things
that I was bullied about most.
And I remember I signed in a couple of these
bullies' annuals at the end of the year.
I got a hold of their annuals, and I wrote
these horrible things.
I became the bully, right?
They didn't know, and I wrote these horrible things.
Saying, some day you'll be a truck driver,
and I'll be rich and famous.
And you'll be there, wishing you were me,
and treated me better.
So I went to my 10 year high school reunion.
I talked to my mom, and my mom has not been
much of a coach in my life, quite frankly,
but that day she was really interesting.
She said, what's going on?
I said, oh I'm going on my 10 year high school reunion,
and I just want to say hello, and I'm driving my way up.
And she goes, honey I can hear something in your voice.
What is it?
I said, nothing.
And what it was, when I was going up there,
I remembered what it was like 10 years before,
when I felt so alone, when I felt totally an outsider.
When I felt, I feared for what was going to happen to me
physically, or at least getting harassed.
And I felt just so different, outside and alone.
And she said, honey, she said I didn't tell her any of that.
And she said, honey, you were always the outsider,
you were always the loner.
And she goes, look what being different got you.
She goes, now how many people were in you high school?
And I said, I don't know, 2,000.
She goes, 5,000 people show up to hear you speak.
(laughs)
she said, for one weekend.
She said, look what that's done.
And that's what I try to tell the young people
who are going through it.
Once again, it's not where you start out,
it's where you end up.
Some of the toughest experiences life will give you drive,
if you don't let it destroy you.
If you realize that this person who is a bully,
is often a bully because they're massively insecure.
And just go, this is temporary.
And get yourself with a peer group of people
who respect you, you love you, appreciate you.
Who you appreciate and love, and spend
more of your time there.
You'll find yourself, if you're filled up
by the rest of your life, you can handle
the challenges there.
If it gets physical, then you got to go
to some authority that can help stop that situation,
if you can't protect yourself.
- Growing up Asian American, and trying to play basketball,
was really tough at times.
Sometimes people would make fun of me,
and they would just say, oh, you're Yao Ming?
You know, that's not that bad.
Sometimes it would get a little worse.
They would say, oh, you're a Chinese import.
Go back to China.
Or, can you see the scoreboard with your eyes?
And sometimes it got really ridiculous.
People would call me just chink, or gook,
or just racist terms like that.
And I remember one time I got really upset.
Kind of lost control, and responded really negatively.
And my coach kind of told me after the game,
he said, Jeremy, when people say that to you,
they're just trying to get in your head.
And honestly, the best thing to do is
take that negative energy, and turn it
into positive energy.
Fuel yourself, motivate yourself with that.
Don't react in anger.
And so my lesson that I learned,
and if there's anything I can pass on to you guys is,
a lot of times, bullies like to bully other people
because of certain insecurities they have themselves.
And so, don't let somebody else tell you who you are,
or what you can or can't do.
Definitely look inside yourself.
Have confidence in yourself, believe in yourself,
and understand what makes you such a
unique and special person.
Everybody has different and really cool
characteristics, skills, talents.
So never lose sight of that.
Just always stay positive, and hopefully one day,
you'll take a look back at these experiences,
and realize hey, me getting bullied,
or me having to go through these experiences
made me stronger.
- One of the greatest pieces of advice I've ever
gotten in my life, was from my mom,
when I was a little kid.
There was a kid who was bugging me in school,
and she said okay, I'm going to tell you what to do.
She said the kid's bugging you.
He puts his hands on you, you pick up the nearest rock,
or whatever you can get your hands on, and you lay him out.
(audience laughing)
- [Audience Member] Yay mom!
- Then I did.
And I felt better, and it worked.
And so for me, that was a great lesson.
Because someone had invaded my space,
invaded my being, you know?
And he was doing something against me
that I didn't want to be done, so I took
control of the situation, and I ran with it.
And many years later, after being turned
into a product by a very huge corporation
that had their hands all over me,
and I couldn't escape it, you know?
I promised myself that I would continue to move forward,
and do my best not to compromise in any way, whatsoever.
Not allow anyone to put their hands on me.
And effect me in that way.
So that's the best advice I think I could give,
is just to keep moving forward, and don't
give a (beep) what anybody thinks.
Just keep moving forward and doing what
you have to do, for you.
- You know, I work in a business where some people
are a little bit arrogant.
And maybe they're having a bad day,
and I've seen this thing kind of happen,
where you're on a film set, and someone seems to be
in a really bad mood, and they're treating
people pretty badly.
And generally you can see that they're treating
an extra badly, or a stand-in badly, or a cameraman badly.
No one ever confronts them.
And I'm a big confronter.
I will generally call a meeting into my trailer.
With producer, with either the person who's causing
what I think is unnecessary tension and disruption.
Or being particularly mean.
And I will say, look, I come here every day,
to try to be a part of creating an environment
where we all can do our best work.
And this behavior isn't going to fly.
And what I often find, is that it's when you confront
someone who's behaving in that kind of belaying fashion,
that they're really stunned.
Because normally, they can get away with it.
Because everyone's just like, oh, they're in a
really bad mood, what are we going to do?
Oh my God, you talk to someone.
And everyone's sort of whispering, and sneaking around,
instead of walking up to that person and saying,
what is your problem?
What is your problem?
Because your problem is becoming our problem,
and in fact, we were having a really good time,
until you entered the scene, and created an environment
that was unpleasant, disruptive, and unnecessary.
And you know what?
It's not going to make anyone work any faster,
or any better.
The ways in which you get people to work faster and better,
is to treat them as equals.
And to treat them as people who care about their work,
and you care about your work.
And it's only when people come together,
that you can accomplish something.
- If you've got somebody that's bullying you.
Like both of you got jumped on.
You took steps, you reported, you said the right things,
you did the right things, and you still got attacked, right?
Is that fair?
- No.
- No way it's fair.
When you go to somebody in authority,
and you tell them what's going on,
that's not tattling.
You did the right things, Lily.
Did the right things.
And you still got attacked.
The question is, what do you do when that
unfair thing happens to you?
Do you let that define you?
Or you can say, well wait a minute.
I got to be my own best friend here.
I have the power to choose how I feel about this.
I'm not going to be embarrassed.
I'm not going to be traumatized for the rest of my life.
Behaviors have a beginning and an end.
You two got attacked.
Lasted a few minutes, right?
How long has it been?
- Over a year.
- Few months.
- And you're still effected by it today, right?
- Yeah.
- You have not given yourself permission to get past it.
You've not given yourself permission to say,
I encountered some sick people, some small people,
some petty people, some jealous people.
I want you to change choices.
You're already choosing how you feel about it.
If this is brought up to you,
what are you going to say about it?
Aren't you that girl that got beat up on the tape?
Yeah, it was one of the worst times of my life.
Did you have a question about it?
Oh.
You know what's going to happen?
They're going to go, oh, no, I guess I don't.
This isn't something where time heals all wounds.
Time heals nothing.
It's what you do with that time.
Okay?
What I want you to do, is five years from now,
I want you to look back and say, that event became
the springboard for me being tough, focused,
and able to other people move along.
- Bullies prey on the weak to feed their own insecurities.
They can't do anything amazing themselves.
They don't want to get into the arena and follow their dreams,
and so what they need to do, is pull everybody
down to their level.
If somebody's here, and somebody's up here,
and you want to get closer, it's either bring
the people up with you, or try to
tear the other people down.
And that's what bullies do.
And what they crave, is your response.
They crave you reacting to it.
That's what they want.
They want to get under your skin.
They want you to feel that you're now at their level.
They want to drag you back down to where they are.
They want to fight in the mud.
And so the solution is, don't give it to them.
Again, they want to pull you down to feed
their own insecurities.
And if they don't get it from you,
they're going to get it from somebody else.
And if you don't give it to them, if you don't react,
if you don't yell and scream, or cry, or get upset,
they're going to go somewhere else, they're going to
leave you alone.
So stop reacting.
This, at the start, may be harder to actually do
than to say, but it's a simple, easy solution.
Doesn't mean it's actually easy to do.
But reminding yourself, before even you go
into a situation, will make it easier for you.
So if you know that there's this person,
who's always bullying you, and you have a
meeting with them coming up, remind yourself of it.
Remind yourself, that I'm not going to react.
That this person's opinion doesn't matter.
I'm not going to let them trigger me.
Remind yourself of that before the meeting,
and going in will be easier for you to get
the desired outcome that you want.
And if you do that consistently, they're going to realize,
wow, this person doesn't care anymore,
this person isn't triggered by me anymore.
Huh, I'm not getting what I need anymore from that person.
I'm not feeding my own insecurities anymore
from that person, I'm going to go somewhere else.
I'm going to go pick on somebody else.
That's what bullies do.
I would strongly encourage you to stop
living your life in the rear view mirror.
People rip off my content, as an example, all the time.
People will post things that I'm putting up
on YouTube, on their channel.
With credit, with no credit.
They're trying to do exactly what I'm doing.
I don't care.
People write to me all the time, like hey,
this person took your video, and posted them
on their channel.
You're not going to do better at being me,
than I will be at being me.
That's just not going to happen.
And I can either choose to spend all of my time,
focusing on these people, and just defending what I have,
as opposed to going out and getting more.
I'm not concerned with somebody trying to be
the next Evan Carmichael, because you can't.
But you can be a better you, than I could be.
That's where you need to focus your energy.
And so, I don't spend my time focusing
in the rear view mirror.
I don't care about taking down those videos,
or taking down those channels.
What I care about is the mission that I'm on,
in helping you guys, and making more new,
amazing, awesome videos.
And so if you're spending your time worrying about
bullies, and dealing with bullies, and reacting to bullies,
then you're not spending your time
focusing on big things that you can do to grow.
You're spending your life in the rear view mirror,
instead of driving forward.
So stop spending you time, in the rear view mirror.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
I made this video because NeNeNa asked me to,
so if there's a topic you'd like me to cover
in the next edition of Believe Life,
leave it there in the comments below,
and I'll see what I can do.
I'd also love to know what did you think
about this video?
What did you lean from this video that you can
apply immediately to your life, or to your business?
How do you handle bullies, that maybe we missed
a point, that you can share.
You can contribute back to Believe Nation,
and share some knowledge as well,
leave it there in the comments below,
I'm going to join in the discussion.
Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Matt McGill.
Matt, thank you so much for picking up a copy
of my book, Your One Word, and for reading it,
and tweeting it out, I really appreciate
the love and the support, man.
So thank you guys so much for watching.
I believe in you.
I hope you continue to believe in yourself,
and whatever your one word is.
Much love, have an amazing day, and I'll see you soon.
(dramatic crescendo)
- There's no question, that individuals
who are bystanders have more power than they realize.
Because most bullying is going on for the joy
of that person getting attention.
It's a sense of power.
If nobody notices them getting power,
they don't feel a lot, you know?
And for some people, who are bullying the individual
just by themself, but it's really rare.
It's usually a pack mentality.
And you don't have to be bigger than that person,
you don't have to pick a fight with that person,
all you have to do it, you and two or three other people
just go, this is not cool, or listen,
we're going to call somebody, this is,
dig this up some other time.
Anything that you do, that just breaks the pattern
even for a moment, that's all it takes.
'Cause people get in state.
A bully, isn't always a bully every moment of their life.
You're going to meet somebody that's a bully,
in another environment, they could be a really cool kid.
But when they get in that state of being a bully,
it feeds on itself.
So all it takes is a little pattern unwrap.
And a lot of people are afraid.
Oh no, they're going to come attack me.
They may threaten you, but you're not
really their focus.
That's not really what it is.
And by the way, it happens with adults.
It happens in a different way.
It happens by rumors, and things of that nature.
It certainly happens to celebrities.
I have a lot of celebrity friends and clients,
and I'll be at a party, and somebody will say something,
in the entertainment business especially,
about this person, and I'll just say,
you know what, I watch other people around,
I see two other people are friends,
not say a word, and I'll step up and say you know,
that is total bs.
You know that's bs.
I know this person, they're my friend.
What you're saying is just completely made up.
There's no truth to it whatsoever.
Why would you do that?
When you put the burn back in that direction,
(snaps) it's really rapid how things change,
'cause other people look around.
What I tell people is, don't tolerate behavior.
You get what you tolerate.
Don't tolerate behavior from other human beings,
that you personally would not want for yourself.
And so even if you're not the one being bullied,
don't tolerate it.
Step up.
And we could not tolerate it by the
power of the third side.
There's a person attacking, there's a person
being attacked, and there's the third side.
The third side can surround it, and change it
in two seconds.
And I say, lead the third side.
- For a long time, people were talking about bully.
And that was a big hot topic.
And I think sometimes you can forget that
you can be your own bully in some ways.
You are the person that is standing
in the way of your success, whether its
professionally, or personally.
And honestly, that was the case for me.
I was having a great professional streak.
But personally, I was really immature.
And so I had to balance them out.
Finally I had enough, and I said hey,
you need to speak up for yourself.
If you're not happy with something, you change it.
Change it, make yourself better every single day.
So I went to a lot of therapy.
(laughs)
And I guess I put it in the way of you're going to
hear me roar.
Finally, I'm going to be able to speak up for myself.