Was That Really Bullying? With Kenlie Fite

This week on breaking bullying.

We've talked a lot about the effects of bullying.

But this week, we're going to flip the script.

We're going to delve into what isn't bullying.

So sit back.

We're going to hit that music and we're going to get start.

Bad things can happen to all of us.

But just because something bad happened doesn't mean you were bullied.

Joining us this week with her tale of a very negative experience

and how it affected her and how in many ways

it might have looked like bullying but wasn't is Kenny FITE,

who is a population scientist and a success coach and somebody who has,

it can be argued, changed the entire industry

of airline flight.

Kenley, how are you today?

I'm doing well.

Thank you so much for having me today.

And not as an afterthought.

Also joining us is my co-host, Tim.

I feel like I get forgotten about sometimes.

Where are you?

Kennedy Thanks for having me.

Thanks for coming on our podcast this week.

Yeah, Thank you. It's my pleasure.

Thank you.

KELLY I've known I work with kids in my school

and I would get mad telling me that, hey, my kid was bullied.

This kid called my kid, I mean, name.

And it wasn't bullying, you know, it was just a kid being rude or being just young.

But you have a very interesting story

that not just happened to you one time.

It happened to you twice.

Can you go ahead and show us that story?

Yes. Yes.

So it's it's so interesting.

So over a decade ago and I it's it's so relevant today as well,

I was told that I was too fat to fly by Southwest Airlines.

And so I had a story go viral

because I talked about it on the Internet and people were outraged.

And it really it was such a difficult thing

that led to a lot of positive change.

And it's so interesting.

I appreciate the opportunity to really come on and be able to look at it

and kind of reflect on it through the lens of what I know now,

my experiences, my education and my work,

and really kind of define what that

what that was and and really how I moved

forward from it and a helpful will hopefully be a helpful way.

So what happened exactly?

Well, I was I was on the fourth

part of a connecting flight and my flight was running late.

Yeah. Yeah. It was a long day of travel.

And I got to the gate and I was asked to purchase

a ticket on on the market day, the value of the ticket that day

to fly home to just continue the rest of the flight.

And when I expressed that I had already been on the flight

and I was fine on the last one, I had just jogged to get to the gate

to get there on time for the next one.

I was told I wasn't allowed to get on the plane because of my size,

and so I had a very public conversation about private things.

I was asked what clothings size I wore, how much I weighed,

and I was happy to tell people because I'm I'm still actually over a decade later,

I'm still over £100 lighter than I was prior to that experience.

So it was just one of those days when I realized, okay, well, I'm still

in a plus size body and I was just treated differently as a result of that.

So this all happened at the gate.

This is not inside the plane yet.

Right? Yeah, it happened.

It happened as I was trying to to get on the plane.

Yeah. Yeah. Was it a male or female?

It was

first a male and then also a female actually came out

and sort of attempted to aid him and asked me the same kinds of questions.

And so it was a really it was a kind of a

a very personal thing that happened in front of everyone at the gate.

It was not a good day.

It was not a good moment, even though it led to good.

They just stopped the whole boarding process to take care of you first.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I pulled out my I pulled out my phone and sat a popular blog at the time,

and I pulled up my phone and I just started recording them,

sharing their language and the different things that that they said.

And, and I posted about it and it became a viral story shortly after.

Speaking of their language.

Were they treating you with a degree of respect

or was it very, very much like you were

kind of in the realm of a human being, but not quite so much?

It was not respectful.

I definitely I will say that

I found it offensive at the time, and I didn't know how to process that yet.

So I want to be very clear that I don't feel like a victim

regarding this situation, but I would not say that it was respectful.

No, it certainly was not.

It was kind of a tough day for me, but it was clearly a bad day for them as well.

It's their job to be there.

I'm I, I think it's a bad day or whatnot.

That doesn't change the fact that they should have been respectful.

I mean, they're there.

So they were talking to you in a way

that would have been, shall we say,

emotionally disappointing.

It was emotionally disappointing.

It's something that I would not tolerate.

Now. I didn't really tolerate it then.

I have a lot more skills in my pocket than I did at the time.

But yeah, it was definitely disappointing and it was increasingly so

after a very public apology from Southwest when it happened again months later.

So it happened twice.

Before we get to the second one, the move to the second one.

During the first one,

you had this interaction with these two lovely individuals

who were having a bad day.

How did that resolve on the day?

Were you kept off the flight?

Did you finally get in?

Did you have to buy the second ticket?

I did finally get on the flight

and I did not have to buy the second ticket.

People at the gate

kind of formed their own court of opinion and I was allowed to board the plane.

I think they really didn't know what to do with me at that point, but

they allowed me to get on the plane and I headed back, finished the trip,

and then took a different airline for my following trip.

But once

that happened, you said you recorded it, you blogged it the first time.

What did Southwest do post the first flight, if anything?

Well, I blogged about it and then I woke up.

I don't I don't remember now. So hazy.

It was so long ago.

If it was a day later or a couple of days later in which and Twitter had really

exploded, there were a lot of people who were sort of angry about it

and sharing their opinions, as we know that they do on Twitter.

And Southwest actually reached out to me.

So an executive from their headquarter has reached out

and just asked me to consider flying with them again.

And I did fly with them again.

So I had a very good experience at the hands of that executive

and it went pretty well.

But then after that, when I was back on my own, it was back to,

you know,

sort of a similar, similar treatment to what I had experienced the first time.

And that's when I knew I had to make a change.

So it happened again.

How did Southwest react the second time?

The second time

I really in the beginning and again, this was the person

on the front line of what was happening just didn't react well.

And at this point I knew about their sort of being a very gray person

of size policy, but I knew it better than the gate attendant did.

And at that time I was allowed to get on the plane.

I actually encouraged that person to to step aside

and have the conversation with me privately.

And I felt a lot more empowered to do that.

And it took a little coercing on my part just to get them to agree to have

that conversation behind closed doors, which was really just in a hallway.

But I was able to express, Hey, I've been in this situation before

and and it's not going to go well if we need a different outcome.

I didn't I was able to get on the plane again.

But at that point I decided that I needed to do something else.

So I actually sued Southwest

in federal court and I sued them for no money.

And so looking back, I realize where you know,

I realize how it could have been more effective on my end

if I maybe I would have gotten their attention

more quickly or more effectively if I had sued for money.

But I didn't want their money.

I wanted them to change their policy, and they ultimately did.

And for all of that,

you don't regard that as having been bullied.

I don't I wouldn't say that that was bullying.

No, I think it was rude and offensive and it shouldn't have

existed, shouldn't have happened the way that it did.

But I wouldn't necessarily view it as bullying.

I don't think anyone woke up that morning,

that initial day, with the intention of just hurting a fat person's feelings.

I don't think that's what happened.

I think people just sometimes don't know how to handle their emotions.

I think they weren't trained well, so they took the brunt of the frustration

from poor leadership that they were working under.

And so I wouldn't call it bullying, even though it's unacceptable.

I don't always think sometimes we refer to things as bullying

when in fact it could just be that that someone's being a jerk.

It doesn't necessarily mean you guys are the experts on bullying.

But I didn't feel bullied. I felt

insulted, was rude and inappropriate.

But yeah, yeah.

It seems like nowadays is if you get your feelings hurt,

you're being bullied like this person is bullying me.

I feel that's such a strong word

to use and to call somebody a bully, because if I just

if I called you fat, that's pretty inappropriate as being rude.

I'm not trying to overpower you.

I'm just a rude person.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why do you think

people feel like they're being bullied?

Whether you like, in a situation like that or when they get a name called

or some pushes them or shoves them

maybe on purpose as you're walking by the hallway,

why do you think we as people think, Oh, you're bullying me because you pushed me

to the side?

Well, I think, you know, this

is something I study in great depth as in my daily life.

And I think that one thing that happens that is that we follow societal trends.

I think a lot of times people are looking for answers to ambiguous questions.

And when they don't understand how someone could be so unkind,

like it's very hard to rationalize something that simply isn't rational.

And I think we often confuse trying to to look at a situation rationally.

It's very easy for our emotions to come in and get involved.

And when that happens, it's easier just to say, okay, yeah,

let's put a bow on this and call it bullying than it is to

to really look more in depth that at the other possibilities.

The scenarios are really endless, but we kind of hyper focus as a society

on whatever we hear someone else saying, unless we're challenging our own thoughts

and really thinking about them in a self reflective way.

I've talked to people

before and they would bring up like their workplace

and they're saying, My boss is bullying me because my boss believes

things should be done this way and I disagree with it.

So my boss cuts away my work.

I tell you, no, that's not bullying.

That's your boss being a boss, telling you what to do.

I'm not sure why you would call that bullying.

Yeah, we have we often have expectations.

Everything that we do in life, every choice,

every decision we make, is based on a perceived outcome.

And so if if if I'm the boss and I have a certain set of expectations,

it's my responsibility to communicate them clearly and respectfully.

But it's not my job to coddle.

I mean, it's not there are going to be times when when

you have to do things in a way that you may not think is best

because you are you're required to do them as part of your role.

But that I definitely would agree with you.

That's not bullying.

That's just that's part of adult life.

I'm on a few of these anti-bullying or these bullying Facebook groups,

and I read their stories and one caught me caught my attention.

This person was saying that their bosses bullying them

and their boss should have higher standards when they talk to people.

And I didn't comment because I wanted to, but I'm like,

don't we all have equal standards

just because your boss is a boss?

But you should also have the same standards as your boss

and as treating people.

Do you believe that's true?

So I think I see where you're going term.

And what I would say is that we do all have standard.

They are not all equal.

So I think it's really important to recognize that

when you're in a situation and someone who is in a leadership position

and you are working for that person or being directed

or supervised by that person, they may not be living up.

I mean, I've certainly had bosses who have not lived up

to the standard of respect and kindness that I expect from other people.

And at that point, I looked for another job.

So I think it's really important

to recognize that having standards, we all have them.

Again, those are expectations.

Our perceived outcome.

But when someone isn't meeting them, it may be that

they just have a different value system or a different set of ideals.

It may just be an opportunity for you to look

and kind of figure out what would be a better fit.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

But would you call that bullying though?

Oh, no, no,

no. There's a difference between

having an expectation of how you're supposed to be treated

and the corporate culture or the culture of whatever it is,

not matching the way you would like to be dealt with.

Then it becomes decisions on your part, whether you want to

a stay and try to cope within the circumstance that it is

or be walk away or there's always option C,

which is stand up for yourself and see what happens

because sometimes it can work in your favor and sometimes you can create

a war zone that doesn't benefit anybody, least of all you.

Yeah, but we don't all have the same value systems.

We all don't pull from the same thing because, you know, just there are so many

different pieces of our makeup and they're just not the same.

Well, we have such different

lived experiences that really just create the fabric. So.

So it's great that we're not all the same.

I mean, when we're looking at it from a lens of a healthy

standpoint, it's fantastic that we're not the same ten.

I'm sure that on any given day you and I have experiences that are different,

different interactions, people, you know, we might interact with Bruce

in a completely different way.

That's that's beneficial and that's life giving.

But yeah, I think it really my what I learned

from the experience that I was in and what I continue to learn now

is that I have to determine what my actions will look like

because I'm responsible for those and I'm responsible

to make sure that I'm taking care of myself, that I'm being

that I am

living up to the standard I set for myself.

And that's something I can control.

The rest of it

is I can't control the rest of it.

I like that you said that because I feel like in today's society

we get our feelings hurt.

People tend to feel like, Well, no, I can be as good as I want back to you.

I'm gonna make a show and they'll just blow up in your face.

Even if this other person even made a serious mistake.

For instance, my my daughter and I, she's a 21 year old.

She's autistic.

We were in McDonald's one day, and this person

forgot to put something on their burger.

I don't know what it was,

but this lady came in just because they messed up her burger.

She just chewed out this young high school kid about a burger.

And he was like, Oh, do you want to be my manager?

And they're like, No, I don't want to speak to your manager.

I, I think people

lose your self-control like they feel like they have the right to treat you rude.

And it's like a never ending circle because that kid handled it well.

But you can go on Tik Tok or watch Karen videos

or watch other videos where they'll start a fight.

Then they'll start a fight.

It just keeps going back and forth and never resolved.

Do you think there has been a coarsening of society?

I you know, I'm so glad that you all are bringing attention to this,

because I will say that I have a website now and it doesn't have

I don't have as many followers on social media as I did

when I was just so angry about what happened to me.

And one of the things I've noticed is

how people really, again, we follow societal trends.

I deactivated my Twitter account because it has really become this

complaining vacuum.

Nothing good comes out of it.

At least that was my perspective. And

so I think we live in this

society where we we most of us feel pretty entitled

and that becomes very dangerous because we can't be entitled

and in humble, or at least I haven't figured out how to do that yet.

So I think it becomes really easy to

to sort of complain and get everyone behind you,

because now everyone has an opportunity to have a voice.

But I want my voice to promote life.

And and

it didn't always, to be honest with you.

And I was I'm proud of the way that I handled myself

when when I was hurt at the hands of Southwest.

But knowing what I know now, I could have offered grace

and still gotten a good result.

But I think we have to know how to receive it before we can offer it.

And I think that's that's where we get stuck because we get so hyper

focused on living in this victim mentality

like, Hey, this person hurt me so I can lash out.

It doesn't make us feel better. We think it will.

It promises to, but it doesn't.

It just creates a cycle of pain.

But it is our individual responsibility to put an end to.

Do you feel it's because things like fear and anger are more along the lines

of a prurient interest where it's kind of almost like a pornography,

almost like that kind of base emotion that even if it's a negative

thing, has a almost primal, kind of satisfying feel.

You know, I think that fear is familiar,

and we tend to migrate

toward toward what's familiar because it's comfortable

and so will sit in an unhappy space because it's familiar.

And perhaps that's perhaps you're

you experience something in childhood that's familiar and you have some

some level of trauma that you haven't dealt with.

Our nervous systems have no understanding of time.

So we will go to what is familiar, will sit with fear

or some sort of some sort of negative emotion or

but fear being the case in this one.

And we'll stay there because it's what we know and it's comfortable.

And I will say that it is extremely uncomfortable to sort of break

out of that mindset and try something new because it's unfamiliar.

But it's it's been worth it in my my life.

A few years ago, we had this issue of school bus bullying

and I there was a Facebook

created in our local town and I offered to say, Hey,

I will love if you feel like your kids being bullied in school.

I would love to help them.

I give them a free week.

I'll teach them how to be bulletproof. Wow.

These parents got upset at me.

You're just trying to promote your business.

Look at this guy. He just tried to promote his business.

He does not care about these kids.

I was like the parents turn.

They got negative to me. Wow.

I was just trying to offer a helping hand.

Do you feel that some people

are just happy being bullied?

Is that even possible or they're happy with how life is going?

I think that again, it comes back to less about being happy.

We we become we are the sum of our habits.

And so I work with clients all the time who come to me and they're like,

Hey, I just don't really know how to like myself.

And it usually goes back to something they believe, something

that was spoken over them a lifetime ago.

Like usually, usually you can pinpoint it somewhere

in their adolescent years someone hurt them.

And so again, it's very familiar.

And when you hold on to something, some sort of unresolved anger

as a young person, I mean that we start playing that over and over in our minds.

It can take a lot.

It takes so much courage and a lot of fortitude

to to unravel that trash, which is what it is.

It's trash.

But we get very comfortable sitting in our anger.

I mean, gosh,

back in to my original story, I was living in a constant state of offense.

I mean, I'm a £300 female who was living in New York at the time.

And when I was, you know, £100 heavier, plus

I people on the street would tell me

how ugly I was or how to point out how heavy I was.

And so it really became a practice to just believe

that people were assuming the worst.

So we really have to learn to unpack this, that I don't think

I think kind of go into your statement about the people getting mad at you.

I think a lot of times when we can't trust, it's because we can't be trusted.

So maybe, maybe there was some fear that that they might have a motive

if they were you, you know, so so we tend to project our unhealthy ideas

onto the people around us rather than just assuming good intentions.

It has been my

experience that especially when it comes to childhood traumas

that create anger responses or self-loathing responses,

those are the hardest thing to dig out of you like much like you.

And actually, I even had a podcast called The First Fat Kid, you know,

because I've also been heavy for most of my life.

I've gone up and down, up and down, up and down.

And because at around the age of 11, I weighed £280,

it doesn't actually matter what my weight is in the back of my head.

I'm always an 11 year old £280 kid.

And that's the levers that drive the machine.

That is me.

It doesn't help that I'm a bit more up there right now, but even when I'm

this circumstance of being teased and bullied at that point

defines me even now to some degree.

And there are bits and pieces that I can work on, but I can never fully

excavated out of my head.

I can never get rid of it.

It's always still present.

I don't think we need to get rid of it.

I think we need to learn how to leverage it, which is what I have done.

And so it's not it's not as if

no one is ever going to say a negative thing about me again.

That's going to happen because we live in a world

that is filled with broken, hurting people.

So that's that's going to be a thing when I recognize

that that will occasionally happen.

It takes the pressure off of me to sort of wait for when it does

and what what it does instead is

I have refocused myself to understand, okay, I remember a time

I wish I could go back and tell myself, Hey, you're valuable, you're enough.

Your unique gifts are going to serve you really well.

You just have to get through this hard time.

And that's what I do now with clients all the time.

But so I don't.

I don't want to forget it or forget what that pain felt like.

Instead, what I want to do is continue to leverage it, to continue

to be able to say, okay, I'm recognizing that something

something's going on with this person here and they're not being kind to me. Wow.

They probably have an issue.

I wonder who hurt them.

I wonder how I can help them.

And they don't always receive that help, but sometimes they do.

I was at a I don't know if I told you this story,

but I was at a gym several years ago, shortly,

shortly after moving to New Orleans and a skinny person

and I say skinny, reminding you that fat is different,

but a skinny person was mocking me while I was swimming

laps at the gym and I was swimming a mile that night.

And so I still feel pretty proud that I can easily get a mile in a pool.

But I was swimming in the pool

and this person who was smaller than me

started taking video of me on her phone.

And well, that's. That, you know, that is.

Yeah. Oh, of course it's rude. Well, so here's the thing.

Now I know how to approach in one and say, Hey, that's rude.

And I have a high level of self-efficacy and belief in myself that I can do that.

But as I, as I watch this person, like,

try to make me feel bad, I recognize she's trying to make herself feel better.

And so I looked right in the eyes and I was like,

Whoever said you weren't enough was wrong.

And she started crying.

It was the most redeeming moment for me because I didn't have to take

on someone else's crap and carry it as my burden.

So I got to empathize with that person.

But I didn't have to take on her words or her actions toward me as the truth

and once I learned how to stop doing that, I didn't need to get rid of it.

I was able to really like, use it to help benefit people around me.

Just saying that to that person.

It takes a ton of self-control because

who knows what I would have said.

But you know, but.

We know what I would do.

I'm from Philadel phia and I and I carry that, so.

Oh, God.

I just

I also want to say I don't know how to I don't know if this really is

is the appropriate moment to say this, but I do want to add that

a lot of times the things that hurt us the most kind of speaking

what you were saying a few minutes ago,

Bruce, the things that hurt us the most are the things that we believe

about ourselves.

So if someone says to me, Hey, Kinley,

you're not very smart, I all, like, laugh at them.

Like, I know I'm smart, I'm

not the smartest person, but I am really smart, highly educated.

That doesn't hurt my feelings at all.

I'm like, You don't know anything.

But when it's something that is more personal to me,

it takes time for me to say, okay,

let me challenge that, but let me replace it with the truth

as I know it, who I am and so it takes a lot of practice.

It's something that

I've gotten a lot better at, but it's something

I have to continually practice to, if that makes sense.

It does for me,

and Tim will give his after mine.

But for me, I, generally speaking, don't put much credence

in what other people think of me unless I know them,

and they have earned a degree of the right

for their opinion to matter to me.

And so what.

That's good.

Hampers me is my perception of myself,

which is very highly shaped by

my my childhood.

So I know things like I'm creative, I'm smart, I'm I'm capable.

I am probably the most jack

of all trades person anybody ever meets.

And I can make a lot of things happen.

I'm never going to be an expert at anything,

which I'm very comfortable with because I can do a ton of things

well enough to be very efficient for myself.

But my perception of my

weight is the make or break for me,

and it's all internal

and I don't care what anyone says about it, but I care how.

It's how I feel about it.

And that's the thing that sits with me, my own internal perceptions of myself.

Those are the most painful because those are the ones we can't get away from.

And so those are the ones that I mean,

we have to dig the deepest to address.

And I think there's so much there's so much freedom in that.

But I do think it takes a lot of courage to even recognize that.

And and that's so powerful, so powerful

if I could have a client who could walk in to my office

with that as their starting point,

I mean, they're going to make progress because that that is an issue that

we have to be able to admit that.

And I think it's so hard.

We carry a lot of shame when we don't

when we're not willing to bring light to something.

And so I think it's really good that you can recognize that.

That's so helpful.

You know, my biggest issue is as I was bullied

all throughout school and I turn into this people pleaser.

So I always want to do things to make that person happy.

And of course, I worked in health care for many years,

about 20 some years working in health care.

So I was just kind of embedded, you know, you please the people or

I got into running a business, I realized being a people

pleaser, people started to

I won't say abuse it, but they would use that

towards their advantage and take advantage of me and just stuff.

Like a year or so ago, I started realizing I'm a start.

People pleasing and do what's best for myself.

But, you know, starting my business, trying to be a people pleaser,

I was afraid of change anything because I'll make somebody mad.

And and looking back at it, it's like,

why do I give a crap what they thought in the first place?

No benefit me, improve me at all.

I worried about this one person's opinion and social media was big for me.

Doing your own business when I know it's Kato karate the first time I to get people

messaging me my business.

You're not real karate, bubba, but all this stupid stuff.

And I'll let that, I'll let that.

And I think it a lot of that I got more positive than negative

and I will let that little comment.

Just eat up at my day.

And I had one person tell me, well, you should call yourself Kato karate

because you're not karate.

I almost changed my business name to Kato Martial Arts

because I was worried about one person start.

I was like, Kayo, martial arts does not sound as a marketing term as a sound.

Good. Doesn't sound catchy.

Kato Karate sounds catchy.

I was thinking, okay, I don't care what you think, but

for many years that people pleasing, you know, if you're a people pleaser,

that you know, when people spot that they're going to take advantage of you.

Is it bullying?

No, no, not really.

You're just, you know, taking advantage of a good situation.

Kind of setting yourself up or being taken advantage of.

Yeah, that's true.

Wow. I'm so glad to hear your business story.

So I just started a business earlier this year and I had a different name

and I came up with Fight Forward Solutions.

So I fight for because it's my name.

I like it.

Oh, thank you, Thank you. I thought it was so clever.

And there were people who thought

it was amazing and people who thought it was cheesy, but I liked it.

So I'm going with it and I'm learning how to just take the insecurity

and channel it into something honest so that so that people want to engage

and want to interact with me.

So hopefully it will continue to work.

I fight for it.

It's simple, it's catchy, and.

The primary name of the name of your business is to sit in someone's head.

So when they need your service, they remember you.

So if you've got a convoluted name that doesn't sit in the brain,

it doesn't matter what it is.

It's just not going to help you not be homeless.

Yeah. Yeah.

As a success, Coach, how if I was a negative person all the time.

Bruce Yeah.

Didn't answer my text today.

I'm pissed off at Bruce or whatever.

How do you train somebody?

Write a better text?

Yeah, Bruce called me a name.

Whatever.

I'm going to get a person.

I get offended easily.

How do you how do you change that person's mindset?

Yeah, it doesn't I Why?

I ask a lot of questions.

I do. Because I.

Not just one simple question.

No, I know. Don't you just wish it was?

I feel like I would either be really rich or not.

Yeah, it would be amazing, but it's an emotional thing.

It's a process.

So I would start with some reflective questions and one might be, okay,

so you're feeling angry all the time and people usually come to me.

I'm different than a therapist because a therapist is usually seeking a

they're usually identifying a diagnosis, whereas I'm looking at

the areas of someone's life where they kind of feel stuck

and they're, you know, I point out blind spots.

So so I just want to say it's different.

And I think therapy is amazing.

And I also think coaching is amazing.

So if someone comes to me and they're struggling with

finding it hard not to be angry all the time, then I might ask them

and I know again this this may be silly sounding, but I might ask them

to spend,

I don't know, 10 to 20 minutes reflecting in a journal,

reflecting on what they want their life to look like when they're 80 years old.

If if they're really tough, I might ask them to write their obituary.

Because when we get to the end of our lives and we reflecting back,

I've never met a person who says, Yeah, I really wish I was more bitter.

Oh man, I really waste the time being happy.

I really wish I was so angry.

And so even though that's not an immediate fix,

it helps us kind of identify what we want out of life.

And so someone might say, Well, I want I want to be loved.

I want to be surrounded by family.

Okay, well, so what are you doing to to to delve into those relationships,

to strengthen them or to even find them, you know, to start them.

So it becomes a very I use a very backward design model a lot of times.

And look at what

people want and then help them untangle those things that they're doing

that are keeping them from

from making progress in that way.

And I celebrate wins along the way.

When someone has a reaction that's different than they would have had before.

We celebrate that,

like kind of putting a bow on it, I would say that

it's really important to recognize that every time, you know,

people are going to say hurtful things and it doesn't make them a bully.

We want to be very careful in the same way that I don't want to be labeled.

I want to be very careful not to label someone else

because they're having a tough day or maybe even a tough season of life.

So I don't want to throw around hurtful words.

We I think that

when when we're thinking of bullying and when we're thinking about

just the the the different iterations of of of bullying

and what it means to people, we can kind of recognize that

it's very important, whether I'm feeling bullied or hurt

someone's hurt my feelings or I've been offended to respond

in a way that that doesn't pile on the hurt even further.

Like words are really powerful.

And so it's really important.

I can't I can't control what someone else is going to say about me,

but I need to not add fuel to a fire.

What I need to do is focus my efforts.

Instead, I'm making sure I'm recognizing the truth

and acknowledging something as truth or trash.

I also want to put this out there into this discussion, which is

there are people who are mean and nasty.

But and as you said, there are people who have a bad day.

I would encourage everybody who's listening to this podcast

to think about that one time that they were asshole,

because there isn't one person listening to this podcast

that if you take it out in isolation, hasn't had a moment

when they were the asshole or the Karen or just

it was the wrong day, everything happened and a moment occurred.

It was at a store or it was in a parking and you just lost it

because your mental capacity to deal was just at its limit.

But for somebody else,

you were just this nasty whirlwind that hit them

uncontrollably, unfairly.

Everybody has done that at one point, maybe

not in an extreme way, maybe not in a way that would end up on Tik-Tok.

But if you look back into your life,

there's probably at least one moment where you were that person.

I would say, Bruce, that I was also that person

not to the same degree, but I have been hesitant.

I'm going to tell you all this and trust that that you hear my whole story

and that is the day that I responded

to this, this person who was hurtful to me.

I was favored by the court of opinion and everything.

But looking back now that I was mentioning, alluding to that before,

I wish that I could look at that

Southwest gate agent who probably went through

at least a short season of of a sort of a hellacious

kind of experience at the hands of my blog readers

and my Twitter followers and and the media.

I mean, I was on every major network talking about this story.

And his face was was on video like apologizing

to me, you know, countless times around the world.

And looking back at that now, I hate

I hate that that is how it happened.

I wish that I had had the tools that I have now

because I would have offered grace to that guy.

It still would have been unacceptable.

I still would have had conversations and I still would have done everything I could

to champion change, and I still would have had

a lot of followers like I did at the time, so I could have done that differently.

So even though he didn't treat me well that day,

I want to say on the record, for the first time ever

after talking about this so many times that I can't count

that, that I'm sorry for the way that I treated him.

And if I could look at him today, I would say you were not nice to me,

but I still should have been nicer to you.

And I think that's where that's what I meant when I said

that It's a lot harder with to to withhold grace

or to withhold forgiveness from someone once you've received it.

There are people in the who have chosen whom I've hurt over the years,

who have chosen very much not to forgive me, and I have to respect that.

But for me, again, I can't control that.

But but living with unforgiveness leads to incredible bitterness,

and that's not what I want for my life.

So I definitely what you say resonates a lot because I have been that person.

I should have been kinder too.

And that that's the thing.

Like we are only responsible for our actions.

And and so that's how I live my life now.

And is it always going to be perfect?

Am I always going to get it right for sure?

No, no.

But that's the goal.

And my goal, every single client I have, we celebrate

progress over perfection every day because that's the goal.

The goal is to be a little bit kinder, a little bit wiser,

and to offer more grace than we receive.

And honestly, I think that is a perfect note to close this out on.

Yeah.

Because there's just because I just think that says everything.

Kenley

I know

we mentioned it before, but now in the official capacity,

where can our listeners connect to you?

Yeah, they can go to fight for dot

com or look me up on socials that fight for 50 forward

or fight for it on social media.

Thank you, Kelly, for coming on our podcast this week

and showing us your story and your insights.

Thank you so much, Tim.

It was such a pleasure to be here with you and Bruce. I appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

And as for us, there are two ways to get a hold of us.

The first is our very own website which is w WW

dot breaking bullying dot com.

The second is by emailing us if you have a story of bullying,

if there's any questions or comments you happen to have, email us at

brick bullying here at gmail.com.

Now if you are the victim of bullying, there are online resources to help.

The first is the government's very own anti-bullying website.

And the address for that is w WW dot stop bullying dot gov.

Another good resource is w ww dot pacer

dot org slash bullying.

Now if you happen to suffer from dark thoughts,

if you have feelings of self-harm,

I implore you to stop and reach out for help.

You can find help at the National Suicide hotline.

Very simple number to reach them.

It's 988.

Thank you for listening on behalf of Tim Flynn.

I'm Bruce Jackson.

I would say tune in next week.

But it's the end of summer and we are going on vacation

for a month, so we'll be gone for September.

But join us back in October and we will continue this conversation.