- Hey everybody!
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I have a wonderful, special guest today.
Matt Lieberman has graced us with his presence,
and is going to offer up some of his own
tips and tricks for managing all sorts of things.
But first, we want to thank the wonderful, amazing
Jonathan Katz for bringing us together,
'cause I would have never met Matt
if it wasn't for the YouTube Collab Camp.
And we'll put information about that, below.
So how can my viewers find you?
- Well, you can find me, I'm a host on
Sourcefed, it's a comedy news channel.
You can go to Youtube.com/sourcefed
or you can find my channel at Lieberfriends.com.
That's the easiest way to do that.
That's L-I-E-B-E-R-F-R-I-E-N-D-S.
- Perfect!
- And I do advice videos five days a week
and a live Google Hangout on Saturdays.
- We do a weird, and then it goes
doodley-doodley-doo and then this little butterfly
comes out and lands in a little tree.
(laughing)
- You have a little tree?
- I do have a little tree.
(laughing)
So obviously, my viewers are very interactive
and I have a ton of questions.
But the one I've been getting the most,
is kind of more in your wheelhouse,
as far, kind of an advice-driven question,
is how do we deal with bullying?
I know many of you have asked,
like I even got a question this morning
when I was double checking what I should talk about
someone's like, how do I make myself bully-proof?
And what is your advice to that?
- What I would say to that is that,
sadly, there is no such thing as bully-proof.
And that's not the goal ultimately.
Because people, and life, will always throw
freakin' curve balls at you.
And there's nothing we can really do about it.
The only thing that we are able to control
is how we choose to view ourselves
and how we choose to feel about something in the moment.
You can let someone being,
Can I swear on this channel?
- Of course.
- You can let someone being a huge asshole to you
make you angry or make you sad or you can say,
that's how this person
needs to act in order to make themselves happy?
I feel really bad for them.
I get a lot of questions on my channel,
like how do you deal with Youtube comments
or people on the internet being mean to you?
I can't say that no comment has ever gotten to me,
or nothing that someone said
has ever gotten to me in person.
But what I try to do now, is I try to laugh sadly at it
because it's just sort of like,
there are people in this world who need
to say hurtful things to other people,
to not feel bad about themselves.
Like how much does that suck?
Look, I was bullied from the moment
I got into kindergarten, I want to say
all the way into high school.
At first is was more physical, like when I was a kid
and people callin' me weird and pushing me
and chasing me, not wanting to hold hands with me
in group exercises and all that stuff.
Making you feel isolated, and it feels awful.
No one's going to say that it doesn't feel awful.
And it shut me down for a lot of years.
I don't think I opened my mouth to someone
I didn't already know
between the ages of nine and 13.
Because I had gotten nothing but negative reinforcement.
What I would say when it comes to dealing with bullies,
is don't let them take your power away
'cause that's exactly what they want.
Like someone will be mean to you and you won't know why.
Understanding why they're being mean to you
isn't going to bring you the peace that you want.
Because it may never be a answer that makes sense.
It could be something as stupid as
they didn't like a shirt you were wearing
the first day they saw you.
And now they just can't let go of it,
because it's too much fun or
because frankly, they have nothing else
going on in their lives.
Knowing why or knowing "what's wrong with you,"
is not going to help.
Because there isn't necessarily anything wrong with you.
I wasted the first 20-something years of my life
trying to figure out what was wrong with me.
And like, you're a therapist, I am very into therapy
but my parents, they were concerned about me
when I was young, I was very very smart
but I was not very social, so they took me to
see psychologists and psychiatrists from the
age of five and put me on Ritalin at age five.
I was on medication well into college.
And I was always wondering what was wrong with me.
'cause that was the message I had been getting
from people at school, it was the message
I was getting from home, it was the message I was
getting from these psychotherapists,
and it was very damaging 'cause instead of thinking
about what I was doing right, I was always looking
for an answer as to why no one liked me.
- Why was I different? - Why was I different?
- Just so you know, obviously you weren't any different,
and neither of you out there are either.
There's nothing wrong with you.
That's part of the reason why I created videos,
is so people know that it's way more common
than we ever talked about.
And the fact that people bully,
really for me, the way I think of it,
they have a shit life and that's their only outlet.
And I always feel sorry for them.
- Yeah, the thing is, the people who bully other people
on some level, you think, well they must be normal.
They must be normal, because they have the power to
torture me and tell me that I am different.
Normal to me, is the most damaging word in existence.
Because there is no normal.
The kind of person who willfully inflicts pain
on other people, if that's normal?
Thank god, I am not normal.
Holy cow, that would be the worst thing.
So what I would say to someone who is being bullied is
don't take what they're saying too seriously.
And I know that's so hard,
that sounds like such garbage advice.
'Cause you're like well if I could do that,
I'd already be doing it.
Their words are not who you are.
You have the right, you alone have the right
to decide who you are and how the world views you
and how you want to interact with the world.
If people are saying that you're awkward,
you don't have to be awkward.
It doesn't mean that you are.
If people are saying that you're weird,
you aren't that thing.
You are whatever you want to be.
Like people talk about confidence all the time.
They ask me all the time, how do you get confident?
How do you appear confident?
And it's just don't be afraid to speak your mind, ever.
Unless you are actually going to like, hurt somebody,
you shouldn't be worried about what you're saying.
If you believe something, you should be able to say it.
You should have the freedom to say it.
And that's where confidence comes from.
Confident people don't get bullied, or can't be bullied.
Bullies can't keep them down,
because even when people disparage what they say
they are still going to keep coming.
- Yeah, it's all from within.
If you feel good about yourself,
you can sustain through it.
It's part of that like negative self-talk,
I always, you guys are probably
sick of hearing me talk about it,
but it's all about changing that tone.
Not telling yourself the negativity back.
You don't have to re-wound yourself.
You don't give them that power.
- People told me I was fat, people told me I was ugly,
people told me no one would ever want me,
that I was stupid, all these things.
And I believed it for such a long time.
None of it, is true.
It's really not true.
You alone chart your own course, point blank.
So the best way to be bully-proof is to say
Fuck you bullies!
- And work inside, on yourself.
- 'Cause that's the only thing that matters.
How you view yourself and how you interact with the world,
is the only thing that matters.
- Thank you so much for answering the questions,
for being on, I look forward to more conversations.
- Thank you so much for having me.
- And check out his channel.
- Yes, Lieberfriends.com or
Youtube.com/c/mattlieberman.
- And we'll see you next time.