[Thoughts] #6: Stop Acting Like a Victim

Recently, on an expatriate forum, an English-speaking woman living in Paris complained about the behavior of Parisians against non-French speakers. As soon as she opens her mouth and speaks in English, she is literally ignored by most people or is answered in French in a contemptuous tone. Since the confinement, it is worse: she no longer dares to leave her home for fear of being questioned by the police on the reason for her attestation and being unable to answer in French.

This story made me think a lot because with my small size and my small voice, in the past, I have had similar experiences, I know what it is like to be treated badly because of a completely unfair reason. Some people put me in the “weak” category from the first second and allowed themselves to crush me as soon as they could. Not to mention people jealous of my situation, my luck or my abilities… and wanted to harm me: from a simple denunciation to the teacher, to lies to the big boss, to a totally unfair appreciation on the school report card.

Recently, after having written a 5000 words long article, a smart guy thought it was cool to almost copy/paste my article, rewriting the content. I stumbled upon it by chance while doing SEO monitoring for my blog and recognized my content because I put in it information that was not important, but that was just out of my head. And this clever guy took this information, which didn’t exist anywhere else but on my blog, and that’s when I was sure that I had been plagiarized.

I know all this, and it makes me angry because I hate injustice more than anything else. For a long time, I suffered a lot because I felt betrayed and wondered “how could someone do this to me?” I was the victim of my executioners. I thought seriously about whether I had actually harmed these people, unconsciously, whether it was justified or not. I felt stuck because I couldn’t see how their hatred towards me was justified. I associated my drop in traffic to the sites that plagiarized me, in collateral victim mode.

But we can’t stay a victim all our lives, telling ourselves “it’s his fault” and asking ourselves “why me”.

We can’t stay at home without going out during the whole confinement just because we don’t speak French.
The best defense is to stay true to yourself and be even better than the day before.

As Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, recounted, her invention has been copied a thousand times, but instead of running behind the copiers, she prefers to come out with better products, because in her opinion, her time is more precious and should be devoted to constantly improving, not fighting. She could have acted as a victim and blamed her competitors for their unfair practice. On the contrary, she turned it into positive energy and motivation to come up with more and more innovative products.

I never confronted my executioners and I never denounced them. I sincerely believe that their conscience will take care of it and they will know better than anyone else what they have done. We must not forget that those who cause suffering to others are themselves great sufferers. My defense was to be even better than before, and despite their ploys, I always ended up getting what I wanted, which made them even angrier. By the way, it’s while having the first haters on the blog / YouTube that JB and I said to each other: “that’s it, we’ve reached another level“.

There’s no success without haters, and now, these people, I just avoid them. Too busy living in the moment