The Reasons Why People are Taking You For Granted

Your actions say more about you than you think

People used to take a good one look at me and dismiss me as naive, incompetent and lazy. Some of them didn’t exactly say it to my face but their eyes, body language said everything that was on their mind.

I didn’t initially care because you know, you’re not always supposed to listen to the negative stuff people tend to say about you. But as time went one, I realised more and more people kept doing the same thing.

After I had gotten mad about it for a long time, my resolution to do something about it came to me strongly when I was rejected for a position because I didn’t ‘look the part’. After my anger subsided, I had a eureka moment where I said to myself, “Wait a minute, what if you’re the one giving people the threshold to take you for granted?”

The thought scared me for a moment, but before I could get defensive a little digging revealed the subsequent reasons as true;

The way you appear to others

First impressions do count — a lot. Though I don’t exactly succumb to caring obsessively what people think, I believe that your dressing could be costing you more than you think.

I remember an incident I had with a visitor who came knocking on our door. I stood up from my seat, dragged myself to the door and yanked it open.

“Hello,” she said

“Hello”

“Are you the maid around here? I’m looking for Mr — “

I was pretty offended not just because she had insulted me but because she had done in my own home. No matter how much I looked like my father, she couldn’t get past the baggy oversized shorts and the faded, battered T-shirt I had strapped on. It didn’t help that I had cobwebs all over my face, was holding a brush and my hair was tousled in a frenzy.

To her, I looked forlorn and that was enough for her to conclude that I was a maid. Though her comment is stereotypical, her reason and look of certainty that came with the comment can be, to a degree, justified.

Case study

A research was conducted by Psychology Today, on more than 300 adults — both men and women. They were made to look at the images of a man and woman for just three seconds before making ‘snap judgments’ about them. For some pictures, the man wore a made-to-measure suit whereas, in others, he wore a very similar off-the-peg.

The differences in the suits were made very minor — The colour, fabric among other features were generally the same. The faces of the models were pixelated so that there could be no hidden messages in the facial expressions.

After just a three-second exposure, people judged the man more favourably in the bespoke suit. What’s more, the judgments were not about how well he was dressed; They rated him as more confident, successful, flexible and a higher earner in a tailor-made suit than when he wore the alternative. Because of the model’s pixelated face, the impressions are believed to have been formed after quickly eyeing what he was wearing.

That’s the power of self-impressions. Whether or not he was successful, the man had earned himself a couple of admirers that day.

The way you appear to others makes a big difference in how they think about you. People just can’t help it (I do it too), they make their assessments in the first few seconds of seeing you even though assessments go way beyond how well you are dressed and how neat and tidy you might look. Research also suggests that these impressions about us can start in childhood — one study found that teachers made assumptions about children’s academic ability based on their clothing.

The worse part is, people may get attached to their initial impressions of you and may find it very difficult to change their opinion, even when presented with lots of evidence to the contrary. I’m guessing that’s why it’s become so necessary to throw on a suit when you’re set to go for interviews or business meetings.

Your style of dressing doesn’t just affect the mindset of others, it affects yours too. According to Dr. Schwartz in his book, The Magic of Thinking Big, “Your physical exterior affects your mental interior. How you look on the outside affects how you think on the inside.”

That being said, you don’t have to go get a new wardrobe after reading this article. You can start by making the little changes such as ironing your clothes more often, polishing your shoes, combing your hair, wearing a smile more often. The little things often have the greatest effect.

You don’t stand up to people (You allow them to walk all over you).

The more chances you give someone the less respect they’ll start to have for you. They’ll begin to ignore the standards that you’ve set because they’ll know another chance will always be given. They’re not afraid to lose you because they know no matter what you won’t walk away. They get comfortable with depending on your forgiveness. Never let a person get comfortable disrespecting you.

— Unknown

If you give people too much room to operate in your life, they will begin to take you for granted. Many a time I’ve allowed people to humiliate me in public for no apparent reason. They pounced on me when they realised that I was the type that was quiet, anxious and naive.

There was this one incident in high school where a girl picked on me in front of the class. To be honest, she had no power whatsoever over me; however, I heightened and intensified her power by sobbing childishly at her pokes.

She relished in the power she obtained by brandishing my weakness and insulted me even more. From that day, she never stopped. She kept on humiliating and because I never once stood up to her, I keep on crying and eventually encountered a nervous breakdown. Given the experience I have right now, I would have stood up to her.

I would have told her to her face that she had no earthly right to make me feel insecure about my body. I would have told her that considering that I had done nothing wrong to her, her problem with me was none of my business.

But I didn’t and I regret it and I probably will for the rest of my life. Don’t be like me nonetheless. If there’s somebody constantly taking you for granted, you should call the person out or live the rest of your life replaying the incidents over and over again in your mind wishing you had done something about it.

While you’re at it though you should be calm. Because as a matter of fact, anger is a sign of vulnerability. “Outward provocation isn’t related to imminent physical harm. It’s simply tied to your ego feeling under attack. And the very fact that something outside yourself feels endangering doesn’t suggest inner strength at all. Rather, it hints at an underlying vulnerability — or lack of conviction about your resources to maintain mental and emotional equilibrium in the face of perceived adversity (Psychology Today)‭”

The stress is on the fact that you should remain cool, calm and collected. You want to take back your power, not whip up the rest of it and hand it over to them.

You have low self-esteem

This particular point is somewhat linked to the previous one. The fact of the matter is, people see you the way you see yourself.

A 2018 study, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, showed that individuals with low self-esteem usually seek indirect support — They sulk, whin, or show sadness in an effort to get support. Ironically, those strategies tend to backfire and are more likely to prompt a negative reaction from others.

According to clinical psychologist Dr. Lars Madsen, self-esteem can be frequently traced to abusive or dysfunctional early years, the effects of which can persist well into adulthood. It can also be attributed to stressful ongoing life events — breakups, financial instability, maltreatment from partner, parent or boss, bullying/abusive relationships.

Dr. Kevin Solomons, who wrote the book Born to be Worthless: The Hidden Power of Low Self-Esteem speaks of the instance when our self-esteem system can help us make healthy, constructive and adaptive life decisions but can go wrong, just as any system can. The problem is, when it does go wrong, our failing (low) self-esteem can get us to make self-destructive decisions such as tolerating mistreatment or harming ourselves.

Since the key to low self-esteem is in the way you view yourself, a sure way to clean the dust sprinkled in your eyes is to change the way you view yourself so that when someone tries to take you for granted, because you know your self-worth and don’t already take yourself for granted, you’ll refuse to compromise your self-worth. The analogy is quite simple to that of the male agama lizard who constantly fights off intruders because he won’t let anyone take over his territory that easily.

It’s important to express yourself worth both inwardly and outwardly so you save others the mistake of taking you for granted. Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), psychiatrist and Holocaust-survivor profoundly echoed a saying in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, which I believe everyone should acquaint themselves with, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”