If you have had the pleasure of reading my book ‘Beat The Bully’ (forgive the slight promotion) you may have noticed how I revealed that in reality, nobody is truly immune from being the target of a bully. If there was such a person in existence, I would personally want to meet him and to ask him how he managed to achieve such a state.
Though you or anybody else is not immune from being bullied, it is possible though to make yourself a ‘Hardened-Target’ in that it would be quite difficult for a bully to actually start intimidating you. Fortunately you don’t have to look too far to come across these hardened targets. Do the names Richard Branson, Nick Clegg or Robbie Williams ring a bell? Now if you are thinking something along the lines of ‘Hang on a minute Alex, of course these people wouldn’t get bullied, I mean who’d dare bully them, they are at the very peak of their respective fields?’ Well I will agree with you, being at such heights of fame and achievement, these people are likely to not have many bullies stand up to them. Yet just imagine each of these three people were not as famous and accomplished as they are, working ordinary jobs like the rest of us, yet still maintained the strength of personality we know they have. Can you imagine Richard Branson with his charm or Robbie Williams & Nick Clegg with their high self-confidence levels working at the desk next to yours? Do you think that these people would be the target of bullies or would they instead have the bullies eating out of their hands (figuratively speaking)?
So what is it in the personalities that make these three examples hardened targets? Well in my opinion, there are two traits that make one a hardened target (no matter whether they by nature are introverted or extroverted, loud or quiet, etc). The first of these traits is ones SELF-ESTEEM levels. Or to put it another way, one common trait which all bullies tend to share is the sense of pleasure they derive when they are able to make one of their targets feel small and bad about themselves. In fact, this is probably the basic goal behind all forms of bullying behaviour, to make someone feel worse so that the perpetrator can temporarily feel better.
Hence to hold yourself in high regards would mean that a bully would have a harder job grinding you down to the levels they want you at. Unfortunately there isn’t actually a self-esteem threshold where when one goes above it, they are immune to all bullies. The reason for this is because many bullies when unable to bully you directly due to your sense of worth might instead do little, indirect acts of bullying with the goal of chipping away at your self-esteem till you are grinded down to a level where they can directly bully you.
Therefore the second trait required to making you a hardened target is SELF-AWARENESS. While this trait by itself won’t make you a hardened target, it is vitally important for without it, a bully would happily chip away at your self-esteem levels until there are none left. Yet with a high degree of self-awareness, when the bully does start trying to chip away at your esteem levels, you will not only be able to realise that this is happening but still have the confidence to take action and tell the bully where they can get off. Usually nothing makes it worse for a bully for their target (who still has high level of confidence) tell them that they know what they are doing and that they are not going to stand for it. Remember, bullies are cowards and as such, don’t want the challenge of facing a difficult target and as such, will back away.
So the core traits needed to be a hardened target against a bully is self-esteem and self-awareness. Unfortunately even hardened targets are not completely immune to bullying for if the bully is crafty enough, they might be able to skilfully chip away at such a target’s self-esteem levels without the target realising what is taking place till it is too late. Yet with these two traits you stand a far greater chance of not being bullied.
Before ending, I would just like to add one final thing that been that being a hardened target doesn’t mean you have to be at all aggressive in your personality, ready to confront a bully physically, etc should they arise. Look at Mahatma Gandhi for example. A pacifist but with high levels of self-esteem as well high levels awareness, many of his enemies thought that they could bully him into submission. Fortunately they didn’t grasp what type of person they were dealing with and ended up looking stupid and/or failing to get their way!
