- Heya, playa.
I'm willing to bet that there is something about your body
physically that you just don't like.
It's okay, I used to feel that way too.
In fact, when I was younger, kids would pick on me
for things that would really hurt my feelings.
But as I got older, I learned a few things
that helped me learn how to deal with it,
which is exactly what I want to share with you.
(upbeat music)
Kids, teenagers and people sometimes
can just be straight up jerks.
A lot of times, in an effort to protect themselves
from being made fun of, people will tend to
make fun of other people.
It's a deflection technique, and a way for people
to not let their own insecurities take over.
I wanna take you all the way back
to when I was in junior high school.
I used to be, and I still am, a huge wrestling fan.
Nowadays, I'm sure there's a lot of people
pumping their fists like Roman Reigns
and hitting RKOs out of nowhere.
But for me growing up, everyone was into
Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock.
Wrestling was huge in middle school,
so much that everyone knew what a stone cold stunner was
and how to drop the people's elbow.
And when I first started getting into wrestling,
this is when Smackdown started airing on Channel 9
which was not a cable channel.
All the cool kids had cable, they were able to watch
Monday Night Raw every single Monday,
and I had to settle for going online
to look up results to see what happened.
And because I was just getting into wrestling,
I didn't really have any wrestling merchandise,
no t-shirts, no foam fingers, nothing.
So one day my parents bought me a D Generation X t-shirt,
and I thought this was the coolest thing
because now I can dress like all the other kids.
However at the time the shirt was from several years ago,
meaning the day that I wore it to school,
kids made fun of me.
They were making fun of the fact that I was wearing
the shirt of a group that no longer existed,
and because of that they said I was poor,
and I didn't know anything about wrestling.
Sure enough, the very next week DX reformed,
Triple H and Shawn Michaels got back together
and somehow the shirt was cool again.
But I still didn't want to wear it because knowing
how quickly the kids turned on me and called me poor,
I didn't want to take that risk again in case DX broke up.
So I told myself in order to fit in and feel cool
I would have to dress and act like the other kids,
'cos I didn't want to feel left out.
So at the beginning of the seventh grade,
my parents had taken me and my brothers clothing shopping,
and we decided to buy a pair of overalls
and a Bear Down jacket.
Looking back at those things,
I personally thought they were ridiculous,
but they were the in things, and knowing that kids were
gonna judge me for my clothing style,
I knew I had to wear them.
So I remember me and my brother both wearing the overalls
and the jacket when we got on the bus,
and all kids did was laugh at us 'cos
our jackets were so obnoxiously huge.
I didn't understand what was going on.
First they were making fun of me
'cos my clothes were too old,
and now they were making fun of me just because.
Clothing is something that all of us get sucked into.
We want the latest styles, the latest fashion trends,
we wanna look cool, but most importantly, we wanna fit in.
And sometimes other people will be jerks because they don't
understand why you don't have what they have.
And that brings me to another incident
where I was terrified of the idea of wearing glasses.
You see, my older brother had to get glasses early on,
and kids would make fun of him non-stop.
They called him nerd, they called him four eyes,
they just disrespected him.
I did not want that to happen to me.
But it turns in one of my classes,
I ended up having to sit all the way in the back.
Sitting in the back made it incredibly hard for me
to see the board, so I would just sit there and squint.
I would sit there squinting and it would take me forever
to write everything down on the board,
until one day my teacher came over
and said in front of everyone,
why are you taking so long to take notes?
Why don't you just get glasses already?
I was embarrassed, the kids were now laughing at me,
and I was afraid I was gonna suffer the same fate
of being made fun of for having to wear glasses.
Luckily, I didn't have to always wear the glasses,
I only had to wear them when I was in class
looking at the board from a distance,
so I felt like that was my safe space.
But still, this underlying pressure to fit in
and knowing that my physical looks
weren't allowing me to do that was hurtful.
And as I developed into a teacher,
you bet my face was covered in acne.
This was something I felt like was unavoidable,
because kids all around me had acne too.
However with all the pimples on my chin, my nose,
and my forehead, I still felt like people were
looking at me and only seeing acne.
And yet for some reason all the cool kids had
a crystal clear face, no problems at all.
I kept thinking to myself, I'm still me,
I'm the same funny, energetic and kind person
that I've always been, I just have a little bit of acne.
But as puberty continued to kick in,
I started to develop a little bit of a mustache on my face.
People all around me started calling it a dirt stash,
and even used racist terms like calling me a beaner.
And because I knew so little about shaving,
I was too afraid to ask my parents to buy me a razor,
I just kinda kept letting it grow,
and letting people's insults bother me.
And as time passed and I got older and older,
I kept thinking to myself, I'm still me,
nothing has changed about me except for
some of my physical attributes.
But it wasn't until college that it finally snapped
in my mind exactly what I said to you
in the beginning of this video.
People attack other people's insecurities
'cos they don't want theirs to be discovered.
When I finally realized that, I began to see everyone else's
little slings at me totally differently.
I knew that when someone made fun of the fact that
I couldn't grow a full beard or facial hair,
or that my haircut looked like Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber,
that that was their way of deflecting
what was really bothering them.
And what was really bothering them,
were the things that they feel insecure about,
that they don't want anyone to point out.
Keep in mind, it's not easy to just shrug off insults,
sometimes people will say hurtful things
and they will hurt like they did me back then.
But if you simply change the way you look at it,
you can then see someone else attacking you
as an opportunity to really discover
what it is that's bothering them.
And this is a technique that's gonna
take you time to develop,
so don't expect to change the way you see things overnight.
For me, it took years and years of experiences
to finally see how things really are.
But what do you think though?
Are you someone that gets made fun of
for your physical looks?
Or have you ever made fun of someone else
for their physical looks?
Leave your comments below and we'll talk about it.
It's incredibly important to remember that
you're special just the way you are.
Your skin, your eyes, and your feelings too.
Everything is worth caring about and
everyone's worth caring about too.
As always guys, love and peace.
Hey, thanks for watching, if you're new to the channel,
make sure to hit the subscribe button below.
I put out a new video every Tuesday and Friday
sharing tips, ideas and stories teaching you
how to be your best self.
I've also shared a bunch of related videos
that might be helpful for you in the description below.
Whether you're dealing with acne,
whether you feel like you're ugly and
it's holding you back from doing something,
check out the videos I've linked down below,
'cos I think they will really be helpful for you.
And on a final note, if you want daily pick-me-ups
and positivity, make sure to follow me over on Snapchat.
My Snapchat handle is TheJoshSpeaks,
I'll have it linked down below as well.
I post a new quote every single day
and share my advice and stories to help you guys out.