The Harsh Truth About Self-Worth and Dealing with Mean Girls

Hey there. This is Meadow Devore, author of the Worthy Project, and I teach tools to help you build self worth. No matter how old you are or what you do for a living or where you live, you probably have to deal with mean girls at some point. You might be in grade school, you might be in high school, you might be at work, you might be dealing with the pta. This week I found myself having to deal with a mean girl in this tiny little committee that I'm dealing with. And so I thought, I want to talk about what self worth looks like when you're dealing with a mean girl versus how I used to come to it. So I'm going to start with a little story from when I was in elementary school. It's just one of those moments in time that has stuck with me. So our playground was. You had to go up these ramps to get from the playgrounds to the bathrooms or to the classrooms. And so you weren't supposed to use a different ramp than where your class was. And then that bank of classrooms had a bathroom. Well, I happened to be on the far side of the playground and thought, oh, I'm just going to use the other ramp and get to the nearest bathroom. So I was like maybe third grade at most, and I went into this bathroom. It was like, you know, for the old girls, there was Tampax machines in the back. You know, it was like for the older girls, not for third graders. But I knew it and I thought, well, no big deal, I'm just going to use it and I'll get out of there real quick. So I'm coming out, I'm washing my hands and I'm looking behind me at these two girls that even now thinking about them, they were like celebrities. They were old, they had cool clothes. They were probably wearing Jordache jeans or something like that and probably wearing neon of some kind. I mean, I was super impressed by them. And I was looking at the mirror at them while I was washing my hands and this girl looks at me and she's like, do I know you? Just like that. Just like super, super not nice. And I just got really wide eyed and waved at her through the mirror. She's all, get out of here, little kid. Get out of here, little kid. Okay, so yes, there's that. That's a classic mean girl. I don't know why it has stuck with me this whole entire lifetime. I don't even know who that girl is. And still, even when I think about it, I still picture her older and cooler and more popular. And more put together than I will ever be. What I have learned through my self worth work is what I did there. I just kept doing and doing and doing and doing. And when it comes to, to people that aren't nice to you, you have to learn how to not do that. So I want to talk about this idea of self in the worthy project. I talk about your true self and I talk about self as an entity. Like you have self. It is a thing, it is currency. You can earn it, it can be spent. So this idea of self, who you are can be spent through energy, time, attention, you can give self away. When you give self away for too cheap, you devalue yourself. When you hold self back and keep it as a valuable thing, your value actually comes up. This is from the worthy project. Just like money, self can be earned and it can be spent, it can be saved and it can be invested. It can be used as a type of currency. Its value can be determined by supply and demand. You build worth, specifically self worth, by accumulating more self, hanging on to more self. In other words, you raise your self worth. Or to raise your self worth, you must claim, own and possess more of yourself. So what I was doing with those girls by the resource I was spending, right there was kindness, I would say, or friendliness or even politeness. And. And so I had this thing happen this week and I noticed how different I was and that's why I thought, I want to talk about this because it's not easy for me. My tendency is to wave in the mirror and to be friendly. My tendency is just to shovel more effort and politeness and charm and friendliness at anybody that's not nice to me. And what I have gotten in return for that are people that misread my kindness as weakness. And they're either use it to, you know, hurt me in some way or use it to elevate themselves in some weird way. So I had this thing to go to. I'm on this committee and on this committee there is a woman who was blatantly not nice. I was trying to help. We were all assigned little things. We were all sitting next to each other and we were at a restaurant and her food came. I wasn't eating and so I just grabbed her stack and I said, I'll do your stack so you can eat. And she looked at me and she said, oh, thanks so much for giving me permission to eat, Meadow. I was like, whoa, okay, this is who you are. So this is a. This is where I deviate from My old patterns right there. Oh, man, I have the knee jerk reaction. I just want her to like me. I want to be nice. I want to do something to say, like, I'm worth knowing. I'm worth being nice to. Like, if you just knew me better, maybe you'd consider me more. I don't. I just read it as feedback and go, okay, that's about her. She doesn't even know me. That's about her. So I had to go to this event yesterday where she was showing some of her things that she was in charge of. And I'm in a very small room with about three people, and she's in it. And I watched and she didn't look at me and she didn't smile at me and she didn't wave at me. And I'm there to support her thing. And I was like, do I say hi? Should I say hi is the right thing to do, to say hi? Should I go be friendly? Should I go, like, give her another chance? And so a lot of what I work with clients on and myself, obviously, is this idea of containing yourself, this idea of building self worth. Keep that self in. Don't give it away for cheap. And so I thought, okay, what if I just don't say hi? Which to me is like, so awkward and weird. It's a tiny room. There's only three of us in there. And I just didn't. And I felt all the discomfort that I typically would feel. And that's what would make me compulsively reach out and be friendly. That is where I want to charm and. And be funny or, you know, like, smooth things over. But I thought, well, what if I hang on to my energy? What if I hang on to what I have here and see if she meets me halfway? Oh, my God, I used to never meet somebody halfway. I used to never hold myself back. You know, in the worthy project, I say, I think something like, if somebody gave me an inch, I'd give them a mile. Like, I just always filled in all the gaps. So I never had to know really where I stood with people, because I was just running around trying to fix everything and trying to not know really the truth about the other person. Not really have to see the feedback that I was getting from this other person and honestly, like to give them the option of not liking me. So I'm like, okay, what if I just see how she goes? And I waited and I was there for about 45 minutes. I talked to some other people and she never said hi. She never even looked at me. She's one of those people that close her eyes and looks down the nose while she's talking to people. And I just watched her do that. Every time she looked in my direction, I'm like, okay, lady, whatever. And then I left. And I thought, oh, you know, was that the right thing? And that's where I think this idea of kindness and compassion and virtue and, you know, I want to be a good person. However, I have been really, really hurt by being that good person over and over and over. Like, well, is silence bad? I don't know. I don't know. And I have no idea what's going to happen with this woman. What I do know is I left with my value intact. I did not start shoveling charm or attention her way to try to make her feel better. I kept it within myself and really thought, okay, if I only have X amount of energy, I'm going to spend it on the people that I really care about. The people that are meeting me, talking to me, like, you know, acting like they know me because we all know each other in that room. And. And it was an interesting thing to walk away with. And I thought, oh, gosh, that's so different than how I used to go. So this, this mean girl thing. And I don't even know if this lady's a mean girl really, but she definitely not nice. I'll put it that way. She's definitely not nice to me. But I was thinking about, I got. I love Yellowstone, you guys. I love them. I love Yellowstone. I love Beth Dutton. And I was thinking about, I mean, it's not someone you totally want to emulate, but the. The lady has worth. Like, she knows her value and she is willing to fight for it. So I was thinking about that scene where I think it's like season two where Monica gets held at that bouti and they accuse her of shoplifting when she really didn't shoplift. And Beth comes in and just wrecks the place. But when they walked out, Beth was saying something like, do you know why they did that to you? And Monica said, oh, it's because the color of my skin. She's like, no, it's because you have a kind soul and the whole world can see it and the world hates you for it. And I it that that left a mark when I heard that. Like, that, I think has a lot more truth than people realize. Because I think that when you are kind and when you are polite and when you are friendly that there are people that are bitter or not nice or in pain or struggling, or they get some elevated sense of worth by taking you down. Now, please understand, I'm not saying to be unkind. I'm not saying be rude. I'm not saying to be a mean girl yourself. I'm saying to withhold kindness, energy, attention when you're not being met with kindness, energy and attention. And really, this is about building self worth. So you might have to just sit on your hands for a little bit and. And then be polite, then be kind. Or at least don't go chasing after people trying to charm them. So the name of the game with self worth is to value yourself. And the way you value yourself is to keep self in. You don't give it away for nothing and you don't give it away for cheap. And so really, at that exhibit thing, I just was like, I'm just. My bar is, I will be polite. I will match the politeness. I will match exactly where she meets me. If she says hi, I'll say hi. If she walks over to me, I'll walk towards her as well. And then just to hold myself back and watch nothing happened there. And how many zillions of times in my life, I would have been the one walking over, I would have been the one, you know, praising her accomplishment that day or trying to charm my way through, trying to make her like me in some way. And I would have been devaluing myself and felt less worthy by the end of that. So that's my tip. Try it out. Let me know how it goes. Thanks for listening, you guys. If you find this helpful, please share with your friends. And if you'd like to know more about me, my courses, my books, or about privately coaching with me, please go to my website, meadowdivore.com.