Life Lessons

Accept You Are A Villain

How To Make Peace With Being Hated: A Message To My Younger Self

If there was one thing I feared from a very young age, it was being hated. The idea that someone for some unexplained reason despised me and labeled me as a bad person instilled fear into my deepest core.

Call it people-pleasing or just obsessed with the idea of being nice and friendly, it was one of the most toxic habits I carried into my mid-twenties.

Besides, “people that are hated are bad people”, or so I believed.

Life plays out in surprisingly twisted ways, slapping you right in the face with that of which you fear the most. In an attempt to challenge your own beliefs and grow spiritually as a person, you must experience your deepest fears and come out the other side as a renewed stronger person.

Year after year, I struggled with pleasing everyone around me, except myself. Little did I know at the time, this is the exact formula for achieving the opposite result and leading down the pathway to self burnout.

Although I was known by the majority of my friends and family as a peaceful, loving, and friendly person, there was always that one person, who no matter what I did, always managed to twist the plot and point fingers, blaming me for their misery and labeling me as the ‘villain’.

One of the biggest lessons I learned last year is simply accepting that I may be a villain in another person’s story. It may not be right when you look at it from both sides, but it's definitely true to them and they will continue to view it that way, simply because it fits their assumptions and feeds their cycle of drama and self-induced misery.

“You’ve got enemies? Good, that means you stood up for something in your life.” — Eminem

If there is one thing you take from this piece, it's that despite how nice and caring you may be, it’s impossible to please everyone. Accept there maybe someone out there for inexplicable reasons who refuses to see the good in you and instead highlights your weaknesses and piles them to support their case and storyline in their head. And that's okay!

It’s definitely one of the hardest pills to swallow, yet it’s life-changing once you accept that you cannot change the way people view you, and you are not responsible or held accountable for that.

Our view of people and the environment is shaped by multiple filters and controlled by our attitude, experience, and mood.

Yet one thing to bear in mind is that you are definitely in control of how you behave and you attitude towards others. Don’t let people’s view of you shape how you perceive yourself.

A Message To My Younger Self

Hold your head up high, and accept that you cannot change the role you are given in another person’s story. Be proud of who you are and what you are doing for the people who matter most.

Everything else does not matter.

What is your message to your younger self? Share and let’s discuss!