What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
What if the hardest lessons in life aren’t punishments but opportunities for growth and self-discovery?
We all had struggles in our childhoods.
We have scars for life and have to grow out of the negative mindsets we got from those negative experiences.
I got bullied in middle school.
I grew up in a small town in the countryside of beautiful Austria (the one without kangaroos ). We all live in a bubble there.
People live their whole lives there and only leave the country for vacation.
At some point, it gets boring for teenagers.
Not much is happening. Always the same people.
Boring teenagers = cruel children.
Especially if they have some kind of problem at home or insecurities.
I was the youngest in my class.
I only had younger siblings and I was naive.
I was the smartest girl in class.
I was socially awkward, which led to me getting bullied for saying weird things, always sticking to my best friend, and not being risk-taking.
I didn’t smoke. I didn’t drink. I wore my helmet while riding a bike.
I blamed them
I blamed them for my insecurities and my shyness.
At some point, I was close to killing myself because I didn’t have any friends.
This town was my whole life, and I never experienced anything outside of it.
As a 14-year-old, I decided to go to a psychiatrist.
In retrospect, I guess I was too ambitious to be able to kill myself. I wanted to fix myself to be successful in life.
I blamed those children for everything that went wrong in my life.
Until I realized that I’m the one who decides how I live my life.
I don’t want to think about the past any more because this is not who I am in the present.
What I learned from the hardest lesson of my life
This experience showed me how to deal with negative situations.
I have to accept the past because I cannot change it.
It affects the present, but I can choose how it affects me and my future.
I don’t want them to influence me and my future, so I accept the experience and let go!
It’s about accepting not being able to change the past and changing what I can.
I forgive those kids because they were kids, didn’t know it any better, and changed since then and it was not personal.
In retrospect, I see it was not about me. It was about them.
They had insecurities and needed to let out their frustration.
I know now that those kinds of experiences have made me stronger and more ambitious.
I wanted to show them how smart and successful I am.
Life happens for me.
I know now that if that hadn’t happened, I would have had more connections with my home town, and I would go back every weekend.
They would have held me back from growing.
None of those girls went on to study.
Almost all of them are still living in my home town.
The universe (or whoever/whatever you believe in) had a reason to let it happen to me.
What I will teach my children
I cannot avoid or protect my children from bad experiences. They need them to grow. But I want to give them the security to talk about it and to do something against it.
- It’s okay to not be liked by everyone
- If someone is mean to you, it’s not about you, but about them
- Ask for help! Be honest and tell them that someone is mean to you!
- Don’t let your frustration out on someone else.
- Talk with your parents about it.
- Go out of your bubble and meet new people. There are over 8 billion people in this world
- Be yourself!
- You are worth so much.
- You have a lot of love around you!
- Never question yourself!
Conclusion
Everyone has had some bad experiences in life.
Those situations allow us to grow and to realize who and what we shouldn’t have in our lives.
Instead of blaming someone or something for your current situation: accept the past because no one can change it.
And then use it grow and make different decisions for the future you want.
For 10 years I was stuck in the blaming mode and in the need to prove myself because, “what will they think?”
They don’t think about you at all.
Your future is about you and the decisions you make now. No one else.
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