There’s a lot of talk these days about bullying. As we know, it’s a pervasive problem that many kids in school face. And if the traditional bully isn’t bad enough, now we have a new threat: the cyberbully. When I hear about the blatant meanness some kids endure at the hands of their peers, I am angry, sad, and frankly flabbergasted.

But there’s a different kind of bullying that happens. It’s a subtle version, and one that persists through our adult lives. While perhaps not as obviously traumatic as the kind of bullying we are familiar with, this kind of bullying can have the same sort of lasting and devastating effects.

This kind of bullying can destroy our happiness, ruin relationships, hold us back from achieving things, damage our self-worth, and sabotage everything we do. The kind of bullying I’m talking about is so common that I would be very surprised if you, dear reader, have not suffered at the hands of this cold-hearted bully. Make no mistake, this bully is no stranger. This bully is someone you know very well.

The bully is you.

Wait…what?!?

This bully wears lots of disguises and shows up in many different forms. Sometimes it sounds like a parent or authority figure from our past. Most often, it takes the form of an inner voice that delivers extremely critical and toxic “self talk.” It’s the voice inside that tells you things like…

• “Just give up, you’ll never succeed anyway.”
• “What makes you think you deserve this relationship?”
• “You’re going to screw up like you always do.”
• “You’re such a loser!”
• “Nobody wants to hear what you have to say so just shut up.”
• “You have nothing of value to share.”

Pretty harsh, isn’t it? Yet most of us have heard our inner bully say things like this to us and haven’t lifted a finger to stop it. In fact some people hear these kinds of things day after day and all day long while barely even noticing.

Do we ignore this bully?

Most of the time we do our best to ignore this inner bullying and try to go about our day as usual. Yet the voice persists and, over time, we learn to simply accept it. Perhaps that’s the most tragic aspect of this situation – that this kind of negative self talk is so pervasive that it just becomes a natural part of our experience of life.

Pervasive or not, this unconscious toxic self-talk can have a very real impact on our conscious, tangible lives.

The inner bully has more influence than you might think. It can:

• keep you from some of the most fulfilling experiences in life
• stop you from finding and keeping a healthy, loving relationship
• hinder your ability to prosper and find financial stability
• undermine creative endeavors
• cause you to develop bad habits and give in to unhealthy choices
• keep you stuck in your seat when you’d rather be up dancing

This inner bully can throw a wet blanket over every aspect of your happiness and joy.

So where did this vile bully come from? The bully–this inner voice that always wants to bring us down, make us feel badly about ourselves, criticize everything we do–is often a collection or amalgam of many different voices. Many of these voices can come from childhood.

It can seem sometimes like there just isn’t any escape from this inner bully. After all, you can’t outrun what is a part of you, can you? So are we doomed to listen to the constant criticisms and fault-finding commentary?

The Bullies Secret Weakness

As it turns out, the inner bully does, in fact, have a secret weakness. Despite what it might feel like, there is a way to silence that bully, to get that critical voice to back off and let you live your life.

How?

By paying attention to it.

I know what you’re saying, “why in the world would I want to pay attention to this mean and cruel inner bully? Shouldn’t we try to ignore it instead?” Well, good luck with that.

Ignoring it doesn’t work. In fact ignoring it often strengthens the bully. Bear in mind that this particular bully–like other kinds of evildoers–thrives in the darkness. It lives most comfortably on the outskirts of your awareness, just out of reach, just beyond your conscious control.

It’s there that this bully does its dirty work.

However, once you turn your awareness toward this voice, it weakens. Paying attention means focusing your awareness on it and becoming mindful of it. Like shining a spotlight on a cat burglar, the inner bully runs away as soon as you stop and allow yourself to become fully aware of the nonsense this bully is spewing at you.

To put it simply: Awareness is what allows you to make conscious and intentional choices. Choices that silence the controlling parent and inner bully.

This is but one more in a long list of reasons why a healthy, happy life depends upon our mindful awareness. Nearly all major problems in life can be traced in some way or another, to a lack of awareness.

And the cure for the poison that your inner bully keeps feeding you is nothing other than to cultivate a life of mindful awareness in every way you possibly can.

Now in fairness, I think there are hundreds of things you can do to improve your awareness. Sometimes just a good walk along the beach can help, at least for the moment. But if you’re after  a proven method that creates lasting changes, then you already know what I’m going to say. I’m going to suggest that you try meditation.

Have you heard enough nonsense from your inner bully?

You don’t need to let that bully push you around anymore. Stand up to it by cultivating mindful awareness. Use that awareness to silence the bully by making conscious choices that yield healthy, happy, resourceful outcomes.

Leaving you with this from the lighter side:

This post was born after listening to an episode of the Baily Hancock Show podcast entitled “Type-A With a Dash of Woo”.

First of all, I think it’s important to define woo.  When I turned to the handy dandy urban dictionary, I came up with this.

Woo is the way a person is when they uncritically believe unsubstantiated or unfounded ideas.  Short for woo-woo.

Woo Practices

Defining the practices that are considered woo is getting harder and harder.  Things that used to be woo, like meditation, are mainstream now, and the science is behind it.

Given that woo practices have been around for millennia, what is still considered woo?

Well, to my rather logical brain, here are a few still woo practices:

• Astrology
• Reiki massage (hands off manipulation of your chi, or energy)
• Tarot
• Crystal healing (stones placed on the body to draw out negative energy)
• Necromancy (speaking with the dead)

I know, I know, you will find people who disagree with me.  Just Google any one of these words and you’ll turn up a treasure trove of articles, for and against.

Frankly, I don’t know what to think

Woo Science and Newton

Science tells us that atoms vibrate at specific frequencies and that heat can change that frequency.

And that all things are made up of atoms.

Ergo, we all are walking around as vibrating frequencies.

Who’s to say that those frequencies can’t be manipulated with Reiki massage or crystal placement?

But I know if I paid $80 for a massage and all the therapist did was run his or her hands about a foot from my body, I would feel ripped off.

Of course, this is all based on Newtonian physics.

Just in case you’ve forgotten what that is (I’m raising my hand), here’s the simplest definition I could dig up. Newtonian physics is the description of mechanical events—those that involve forces acting on matter—using the laws of motion and gravitation formulated by physicist Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727).

However, for this discussion, it means that everything is made up of matter or that everything is physical.

That is literally what our five senses tell us.

Woo Science and Quantum Physics

But what about quantum physics? Now there’s a question you don’t hear too often!

This article in Collective Evolution explained it rather well.

“Quantum physicists discovered that physical atoms are made up of vortices of energy that are constantly spinning and vibrating, each one radiating its own unique energy signature. Therefore, if we really want to observe ourselves and find out what we are, we are really beings of energy and vibration, radiating our own unique energy signature.”

Well…that sounds a lot like Newton.

Here’s the difference, though.

If you observed the composition of an atom with a microscope you could measure an invisible tornado-like vortex. As you focused in closer and closer on the structure of the atom, you would see nothing; you would observe a physical void. The atom has no physical structure, therefore we have no physical structure.  Physical things really don’t have any physical structure! Atoms are made out of invisible energy, not tangible matter.

Kind of hurts your head, doesn’t it?

Woo In Light of Quantum Physics

Richard Conn Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University says this. “A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the observer creates the reality. As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality.”

And here’s an article entitled 10 Scientific Studies That Prove Consciousness Can Alter Our Physical Material World.

You know what all that sounds like to me with regard to woo?

It sounds like the placebo effect.  A placebo is anything that seems to be a “real” medical treatment — but isn’t. It could be a pill, a shot, or some other type of “fake” treatment. What all placebos have in common is that they do not contain an active substance meant to affect health.

The placebo effect, then, is a beneficial effect that cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself.  Therefore the benefit must be due to the patient’s belief in that treatment.

If, as observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality, all woo can be scientifically proven.

Let’s say that you believe a psychic medium can help you communicate with the dead.  Then quantum physics says you can create that reality.

If you believe a tarot deck can foretell your future, then whatever the cards tell you, you can make into your reality.

Farmers, to this day, plant in harmony with moon cycles.  What is that, if not astrology? Maybe the energy of the moon cycle DOES play a part in the energy of the seeds and plants.  Quantum physics says it does.

Have I thoroughly confused you?

Woo Conclusion

I started this out by stating that woo is the way a person is when they uncritically believe unsubstantiated or unfounded ideas.

Doing the research for this article though, proves that what may be unsubstantiated or unfounded in Newtonian physics, may be completely plausible and likely in quantum physics.

Maybe those woo people are just smarter than us in quantum physics!

But I’m still not forking over $80 for a Reiki massage…

Leaving you with this from the lighter side:

“My client pleads not guilty on the grounds that Saturn was transiting his natal Pluto at the time of the incident.”