Every learning process is not easy, as I recollect vividly the next thing I had to learn in this school of life. This brings me to my previous post on responding to hostility. I’m sure when you read through that post you were probably wondering why on earth I would start talking about hostility. Well it’s now time to share the reason behind that post.

If you recall I stated in that post that one should ignore and bear. At the time when this “learning process on hostility” started, I had very little insight in this area else, it would have changed my whole perspective on things. Hostility was actually one of the reasons (in addition to my health) that I had considered when resigning from my second job. I just couldn’t bear it. Little did I understand then that it was because I was doing everything right and being viewed as a threat to some certain people.

To say the truth, hostility is not an easy process to bear and could come in many forms; insults; bullying, rejection, criticisms etc. So how did I encounter this hostility? well I’m finding it a bit difficult to write about it simply because I have let go of the past and moved on. The last thing I want to do right now is start a chain of events that would cause some people to begin to hurt especially knowing that reconciliation has taken place. Nonetheless, I will summarize it.

You see, being the kind of person I am, I enjoy doing things to perfection but this was sometimes viewed as intimidating to other people. Little did they know that some of the things they considered as demeaning from my bosses, I would most times take in my stride and shrug it off my shoulder like it didn’t happen.
I’m talking of when a boss is correcting you. On so many occasions, they actually owned up to me that I was considered as a favorite and I would point out that it was the same manner that they were treated that I was. The difference was the way each of us responded to corrections / feedback from our bosses. While they seemed to be demotivated by it, I simply accepted the correction, apologized for my error, shrugged it off and moved on. Anyhow, on several occasions my inability to allow this feedback deter my working relationship with my bosses resulted in hostility in the form of rejection and insults. So when I was considering resigning, it rushed back into my mind as one of the things I would no longer suffer little did I know/understand then that in this school of life until you’ve learnt the lesson behind any process and mastered that lesson, there ain’t no running away for you..lol.

Not too long after that when I got my new job a year and half later, the issue showed up once more to teach me that one cannot run from their problems but need to face it squarely. This time the hostility was now in form of criticisms and rejection but I didn’t let it break me because I had come to understand that good jobs were hard to find, so rather I chose to bear and to escalate it if it was beyond my control.

So what solace can I give to those of you out there that are going through one form of hostility or the other be it in form of rejection, criticism, bullying or insults? You see what I’ve come to understand is that, hostility is an avenue to break that good on the inside of you. For example, if a good natured individual constantly goes through rejection and doesn’t respond well, a time will come when he/she will decide to no longer be good natured and then the hostile party would have gained the upper hand. So my advise to you is – don’t let it break you, keep being who you naturally are but with a difference and that is by ignoring. In some situations like bullying you will need to brace up and escalate, in others it would be basically to use wisdom and act like it’s not there. Yes you know but it doesn’t get to you. Soon or later the hostile party would understand the message and back off.

For me, it took a while before I overcame this hostility but now looking back I wonder what the bigger picture is and how it will fit in eventually. I know it will show up, but even if it doesn’t, I’ll just keep in mind 2 Corinthians 4v8-12.