Ayesha Ashley

How would you know? What’s the difference between a bully and someone who has legitimate power over you, like your boss or teacher or parent?

It’s a question of abuse of power—we all have power over someone—think about it. When you are in a restaurant, you have power over your waitperson—they have to please/serve you in order to keep their job/get a tip.

Key question: How do you treat them? Do you boss them around, criticize their service, insist they take the food back all the time, etc? (I’m assuming that the conditions are generally satisfactory and most people would not send things back, etc).

Some people routinely act as if the waiter/waitress is their personal slave….THAT’s being a bully.

It’s almost too easy to abuse power—and we’ve all done it, thank you. I still cringe when I remember times I have bullied people into agreeing with my opinion, so this is not an academic issue for me—it’s a real one.

I try to be alert to such tendencies whenever I’m in an encounter. If we are honest with ourselves, we will notice that we have cowed someone by our position, knowledge or strength at times.

We all manipulate each other by our words and actions in order to get what we want; bullies add a dimension of force to their manipulations. ‘Do this or else…’

We’ve all had experience with bullies—usually in the schoolyard, sometimes with a parent who was a bully, or with a boss who thinks he’s the New Napoleon.

Usually—if you stand up to a bully—and they might hurt you—they will respect you and back off. (If they are truly vicious, I wouldn’t try it—fortunately, the truly ugly, vicious bullies are not a large part of the population. This is no consolation if they’re in your world.)

Here I’m more interested in how I can avoid abusing whatever power I have…. After all, we’re responsible for our words and acts, no? Being a bully is probably the fastest way to earn bad karma and an ugly reputation as a nogoodnik.

The best way I’ve found is to monitor my words and emotions as I’m arguing with/ convincing another person: am I going over the line from persuasive to abusive? Then I need to back off, calm down and moderate my tone/behavior.

As usual, the answer is self-awareness.

A good practice is to keep 50% of your attention on YOURSELF as often as you can. That way, we are not lost in the argument/situation and can make changes before we need to make apologies or have regrets.

How can we keep some attention on ourselves?

BE AWARE OF YOUR BODY—YOUR FEET ON THE FLOOR, YOUR BODY IN THE CHAIR, YOUR BREATHING OR PULSE as well as what is going on outside you.
WHEN WE CENTER, WE ARE HOME AND AWARE.