© October 2021
Growth comes with a whole lot of challenges. Among the most pertinent ones is dealing with a toxic company. I mean to say, growing in the midst of people who try to put you down so that they may be elevated; friends who always remind you of your ugly past and weaknesses and constantly put you to the test by either debasing you or just making you feel unworthy of your own dreams and ambitions. I realized recently that while it requires quite a great deal of thrust to go above negative criticism, such temptations may just break us completely if we do not take a radical decision. In fact, it is even more demanding when we are debased by the people we surround ourselves with. Amid other radical decisions we may take to keep growing and flourishing, we need to prove ourselves worthy.
1. Dust them off
I remember this friend of mine who kept underestimating me. We met in 2013 just when I joined, for the first time, an evangelism group that operated in our local church. He’ll always remind me of his rich background and his strengths. Anytime we had a conversation, he’ll let me know how he was a great public speaker, great writer, and so on. In essence, I enjoyed him as a friend and as a talented person. Though, he would only elevate himself as to let me know he was better. More to that, in public spaces, this guy would overtly put me down. If he knew of any weakness of mine at that moment, he would make fun of it and everyone would laugh. Well, I would just smile too, enough feeling as to explode. The truth about the matter is that while people laugh at your weaknesses, they still take note of that them and, some latter used that knowledge against you.
This guy made fun of everything awkward on me. When I had no fault, he would remind our gathering of the last fault he could remember. I recall once he told me in the fact that I was “nothing”.
You know, such people are negative energies in human forms. They would never compliment you or even remind a crowd of the things that make you outstanding. You need to avoid them to the fullest. They do not add to your life in any way, so you need to dust them off. In almost all cases, such people are not even worth a quarter of your achievements. For them to secure their reputations or space within your relationship, they’ll need to debase your strengths by ridiculing or magnifying your weaknesses. In my case, this guy had not the academic qualifications I had amassed or the possessions I could boost of. To make things worse, we never had the same ambitions or dreams. I wonder how he made me forget these things for the first three years I’d known him. All I now remember is that I dusted him off when I realized his tricks.
In fact, in retaliation to all the humiliations I got from him, I concentrated on getting my ambitions immortalized. By the time I got my second Master’s degree, built a house for my mom, got a piece of property and a car, and started lecturing in universities around town, this guy had not even got a Bachelor’s degree. I left him to his pride, and he just couldn’t bear himself. To trim the lengthy tale, my friend’s narratives and jokes have changed. We still meet in church groups, and he still victimized people, but not me. Now, he’s rather vesting his frustrations on others because I have risen far above ordinary pasquinade.
11. Get to work
You need to learn how to counter people by simply proving your worth. Fighting them with words may just make you sound lousy or seem silly. Calm down yourself, control your emotions and get to work instead. Let your achievements then speak loud for you— that’s how life is.
This may sound too philosophical, but you must know that life is best measured in time. In fact, I love believing that judgments of whether one made it in life or not, according to our human measurement of success and failure, should be made when in our 50s. So, if someone tries so hard to put you down today, work so hard to prove them wrong tomorrow_ not always on the spot given that it could be a reminder that you need to step up. The motivation and support you need are all within you. In fact, you got all that you need. In Christianity, we believe that God’s grace is sufficient for us. In other words, all we need has been given to us abundantly in the spiritual realm. We just need to work with some focus to make it big. That’s all we need to do!
When I first got interested in civil society, and I started preaching the gospel of peace, democracy, and human rights, some friends mockingly wondered how a secondary school English language and literature teacher could become an activist in the civil society space. Certainly, in their minds, I should have been contented with who I was. Well, I did not get angry or frustrated because I knew that they just were not me. In less than a year, by means of passion and persistence, I had mastered the art of applying for fully-funded fellowships, boot camps, and workshops. I won a place in my country’s top youth leadership and training programs, and those seminars took me to places I could never afford with my own finances. Yes, it wasn’t just easy to get such programs as the Cameroon Leadership Academy or NewSeTA’s REPAIR (Rebuilding Peace through Actions with Inclusive Reach), but the mockeries I got at the earlier stage of my life even fueled my determination. In 2020, I was the only Cameroonian to be selected for the prestigious Community Solutions Program, a leadership development program sponsored by the US Department of state and implemented by IREX (International Research & Exchanges Board). For those who, at this point, think I am proud, well I am just trying to motivate some low-spirited tycoons who are under the spell of gibing.
111. Remember that life turns on a dime
Some other times, you get victimized by your friends who, at the moment, have gone ahead of you in education, career, relationship, or finances. Well, like Don Williams puts it, “The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.” We’re all casting lots, so you must never fall prey to their plots. You know, one thing I know of greedy “rich” people is that they prevent others from becoming as rich as they are. The reasons are simple: they want to remain in control, dominant, and powerful, and they are unsecured because they do not know what you will become if you make it like them or even bigger. Maybe you will become a competitor or you will just have the powers to expose some bad practices.
My very good friend, Solomon Ateh, now a renowned blogger, journalist, civil society activist, and 2021 Mandela Washington Fellowship Fellow, is the kind of a person who never got drowned by mockery or whatever. He was born and raised in a poor family. Due a to lack of financial resources, he could not afford his way into secondary school when it was due. So, he started by learning carpentry in a very local carpentry workshop in Douala so that he could raise his tuition fees by himself. While he learned this new skill, many of his peers laughed at him, _ little did they know there was a giant in the young man. Solomon only went to secondary school; right unto the university years after his primary schoolmates had graduated. Today, he is one of Cameroon’s promising bloggers and journalists. On an October 2021 FB post, he writes;
“Do you know that in 2011 I couldn't speak English at all? I remember during a village meeting with the venerated Ntumfor Nico Halle where I was youth president, I ran to hide when it was time for me to give a remark. Sincerely that man's grammar can be very intimidating and a stack illiterate like me couldn't afford to stand and face the disgrace of talking with him. Now, ten years after, the people who have come around me have testified the quality of English I now speak. It was confirmed by an American Prof Alex Lichtenstein during my Mandela Washington Fellowship where he worked with me as my coach at the Indiana University, and was very impressed with my mastery of the Queen's language. … This is just to say you can become whatever you want to become. That incident is one of the many reasons why I got tired of being who I was to becoming someone else far better than my former self. And, today I'm living that dream. It’s been possible thanks to my determination.”
Many of us have faced similar challenges. How we receive and process the insults is what really matters. Personally, I got a lot of trash from some friends because I was a commercial bike rider while at university and even when I started working as a teacher in 2014. I would teach at secondary school during the day and by evening, I am on my bike hustling. I had projects to accomplish and I needed more money to my meager monthly salary. Teaching alone could not take care of my responsibilities and I had to take on other odd and displeasing jobs as commercial bike-riding, manual laborer at road construction sides, and so on. Before I could start striking great deals, I had accomplished a lot you can’t even imagine. Today, I can do anything without any complex; white-collar, blue-collar, or whatsoever-color collar job. As I am writing now, not all the guys who scoffed at me when I was struggling are still leaving living respectable standards.
1v. Command Respect
Some people just don’t respect you because you are not respectable enough. My former friend would make fun of me even informal settings in order to assert a position of dominance_ like, he is better than me. You know the saying that we don’t ask to be respected, but we command respect? Probably, I did not command much respect in those days. Today, I am better and I don’t only command respect from him, but from many young people in my community.
Spending time explaining your actions or dreams often doesn’t help. You just need to step back, stay quiet, work harder and wiser, and prove them wrong. If you do not make it by incidence, make it by accident. All is that you need to make it_ through the right ways though. I mean, you need to let your achievements speak for you sometimes. I mean, let your achievements speak for you. Success speaks louder than loud arguments. It stops nonsense!
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