How to win at life by walking away.
Try adding some badass to your step.
One of my favorite writers here is James Knight, and recently he published two articles on the art of badassery. One about men and one about women.
On his profile page I noticed an interesting comparison. Engagement on the women’s piece is double what it is on the men’s. This could mean one (or all) of a few things:
- Men don’t care about being badasses.
- Women DO care about being badasses.
- There are more female readers, therefore more engagement by default.
- Everyone wants to know more about being a badass.
One of my favorite points James touches on in his article about women is that the badass ones don’t give a shit. I wish fewer women gave a shit about what goes on around them and just focused on living their own badass life.
Let me break that down a little.
For a good while, the term “misogyny” was a raging trend in women’s writing here. It was like a sweeping epidemic of females suddenly got offended all at once, and couldn’t stop focusing on it.
It was like a swarming.
Picture these two scenarios:
- You’re in high school. You and your pack of girls are in the hallway and come across the douchebag student you all dislike the most. Does your pack purposefully walk up to the person and brow beat them, belittle them, bully them, just because they have shitty opinions?
- Same school, same douchebag, and he’s standing there with his shitty opinions, ready for your group lashing. Except this time, your pack of girls walks right on by him without a word.
In the second scenario, you completely took away his power. Period. End of story. There’s nowhere for it to go.
Placing so much focus on something only gives it more power and I have to question why so many women want to give so much power to such negativity. Why wouldn’t they instead want to place their focus on positive forces that could override the negative?
In many cases, the most positive force available to us is simply walking away and taking our power with us.
We can choose to give a shit in the right direction or the wrong direction. Either way, we give power to the subject we’re focusing on.
In the case of good old misogyny, we can either sit around and bash the system and the men involved in it, or we can turn the other cheek and focus on improving the system and hang with those who positively support one another.
I choose the latter. But I don’t have to bash the negative in order to encourage the positive. One can exist without the other.
We’re not here to teach anyone a life lesson. Karma will take care of that for us, and by walking away quietly, the lesson has already been taught.
We’ll never be able to change the core values of other humans. Trying to change someone at their core is like beating a dead horse. It’s far better to walk on without a word, and leave them powerless in the dust, while nurturing our own positive approach to life.
Do you want wallow in ongoing drama and negativity, or could your time be better spent on an opposite, more productive way of life?
One of the BEST quotes from James’s female focused article is:
“Badass women know how and when to walk away. And they will if they don’t receive the respect they deserve.”
We WIN when we walk away. We don’t win by beating it to death to make a point, and then walking away. It’s such a waste of energy.
Nothing can thrive without support from external forces. So the question is, where do you want expend your energy? I don’t know about you but I want to focus my valuable energy on myself, not on anyone else.
No one is going to get you where you want to be in life. Only you can do that. No man, no job, no nothing is going to help you reach all-star levels. Only you can do that.
Rather than fighting against a shitty system, fight FOR a better system.
If you’re constantly focusing on the bad eggs in the carton, you’ll let the good eggs slip past. Then your breakfast is fucked. It’ll just be toast and cheese.
Walking away from any negative situation is not a lonely proposition. You won’t be a lone wolf out there on a deserted highway. Eventually you’ll come across all the other badasses who also walked away, and there….is your new pack.
This article was written for Behind Every Woman — A Candour column focused on empowerment for women.
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