When I was younger, I thought there was an easy answer to the question of why guys weren’t interested in me.
It was because of how I looked.
I didn’t have the right body.
I didn’t have the right clothes.
I didn’t have the right hair.
If I had all those things, then I would be just like the girls who dated the popular boys. I wouldn’t have to be funny or interesting as long as guys liked looking at me. My body would do all the work for me.
Fast forward MANY years later, and I can tell you quite confidently why guys weren’t interested in me back then.
It wasn’t my body as much as my walls.
I had walls that were so high and so impenetrable no one could enter.
I hid myself from people. I was slightly afraid of people. I knew guys weren’t interested in me, so I didn’t even talk to them.
I was sending out red lights left, front, and center.
(Today, we know that guys look for green lights from women before they risk conversation.)
Why in the world was I doing that?
Why was I sending “stay-away” energy to the very guys I hoped might talk to me?
It was because of the voice inside my head telling me what an ugly, uptight, boring person I was.
Stand Up to Yourself
October is Bullying Prevention Month.
And a woman you might have heard of—Monica Lewinsky—is raising awareness of how our own worst bully is often ourselves.
Yes, THAT Monica is now a producer, social activist, and public speaker who’s spent a large part of her career speaking out against internet bullying.
In her 2015 TED talk on The Price of Shame, she discusses how the pain and humiliation from being publicly shamed in the wake of her affair with then-president Bill Clinton almost led her to take her own life.
Imagine being in Monica’s shoes in 1998. Imagine how it must have felt to have your entire life ripped to shreds by the press at the tender age of 22.
Imagine what the voices inside her head must have told her, to be so young and seen as a “bimbo” or worse by the entire country.
When we are shamed or humiliated or belittled, it is very hard to hold onto our sense of self-worth.
All too often, those voices sneak inside us. They speak to us in the same words as our abusers.
A critical parent. A cruel boyfriend. A mean friend.
Our bullies are no longer just “out there.”
They’re “in here.”
They’re inside our heads.
And they won’t leave.
It’s one thing to say, “My ex was wrong about me. My friend was wrong about me. I’m a good person.”
But it’s quite another to lie in bed at night thinking your thoughts and wondering if they might have been right about you.
That’s why Monica and her team created the “Stand Up to Yourself” campaign.
They’re raising awareness of the way we speak to ourselves in the privacy of our own minds.
Watch and share.
Let us know what you think!