I write things on this blog with the concept of “we go through what we go through to help other’s go through what we’ve been through”. As a woman who is standing strong in her passion and purpose for the Goddess Imperative, I wasn’t going to write about this one, but just watched an UPWORTHY video that made me realise I should. Click to watch it here:
This last week, when I have gone onto my LinkedIn profile to accept a connection, I have seen that two people, both of whom have caused me an indescribable amount of grief in my past, have been looking at my profile.
Don’t get me wrong, I found the gift in the Universal stop sign that was handed to me at that time with each of these people and have moved on. Like totally moved on.
With these two men showing up again and again, I do want to wonder out aloud though. I wonder why would there be any value in looking at my profile now? What possible need would there be to do it? I’m not in the same industry. I’m not a competitor. I’m not even in an allied industry or support industry. I’m not someone you’d be looking to engage in business dealings with because our lives are so profoundly different – there is no match. Did you have a fit of the guilts and want to say sorry?
No, what it is, is a version of cyber bullying.
One of them even had their solicitor take a look at my profile as well after I posted for him to stop. Bullying.
As a result of asking one to stop looking at my profile, he looked again this morning. Bullying.
What possible need would be being met in them to do that?
LinkedIn suspended my account today because and I quote:
“you’ve sent unsolicited mass mailings and/or promotional materials in messages that appear to be phishing, spam, or abusive in nature.”
No, LinkedIn, no I haven’t.
You see LinkedIn, you provide a platform for people to be corporate voyeurs and bullying enthusiasts. You have no ability to block anyone (#NB that’s called a positive action) other than to hide your photo and profile information, which kinda defeats the purpose doesn’t it? Clearly, you also knee jerk react to complaints without full investigation and crucify the accused instead of questioning the accuser for proof.
Now, I get the big picture here in that when you step into your passion and purpose, walk your talk and do what you love, that can be a red flag to a bull for some people. I get that. I also get the message from the Upworthy video that it’s harder for women.
No, I’m not doing the poor me thing. Ever. Just adding my voice to Emily’s that I concur, even though I don’t have 160,000 people following me, it takes MANY voices to say enough is enough to get through to the 7,000,000,000 people on the planet.
It’s the reason why I am the person I am today. Doing my best to stay way out of victim mode, standing tall and keeping my own counsel.
Do I want to fight this human trait.
No thank you.
I guess being caught out and called on it hurts your pride and therefore you have to make things worse rather than just recognising your error and going back to being busy in your day job. I mean, like, how much time are you stealing from yourself and other’s by not focusing on what is in your here and now, but wasting energy to see what someone from your past is up to?
To those of you who read this, who are doing it tough because of other people stuck in their story, just keep swimming; just keep walking; stay true to what makes your heart sing…. and most of all, be open to allowing the people who love and respect you for who you are to show up and hold you in their energy so that you feel like you are in a constant state of happiness, no matter what shows up on the screen.
It would be remiss of me not to end on a note of gratitude for the amazing people I have surrounding me in my today. All of the most beautiful souls that have shown up at the end of what I went through to find my happy place.
Amanda
Clearly these guys have issues. I’m not sure why them viewing your profile is so charged with angst for you. Of course only you know what happened. People do weird things, they lurk and stalk anonymously, but in this case you could see it. How would it be different if you couldn’t see it? Why do you feel bullied? Think of all the people who look at your profile who think you are awesome!! Don’t let 2 losers cause you grief. Big hugs Krishna. P.S. You are awesome.
Thank you Krishna. You are dead right and I agree with you. This has been a trigger for me to address, and gladly I worked with Juli on understanding why and we got to the bottom of it. I decided to write about it in the hope that others will see passed the bully and the screen and as you have suggested – focus on the ones who are the amazing ones instead of puny few.
I guess the key for me on this one is that my no meant nothing. That’s the key bit that moved me to get through it.
Hi Amanda. I’m pretty new to LinkedIn and found the inability to block someone unnerving. I have very few people in this world (2 in fact) who cause me discomfort when it comes to cyber stalking. For the most part I feel secure in my online presence through social media and blogging. i figure its a choice to be present online and with that comes other people’s curiosity. When I discovered that these 2 individuals read my blog and poke fun at me, I accepted that I have my ‘stuff’ on a public forum so that comes with the territory. When one of them ‘accidentally’ sent me a facebook friends request, I laughed at the absurdity of their need to stalk me even though they swore they wished I didn’t exist. When they popped up as having viewed my LinkedIn profile however, I felt like I’d finally had enough. My LinkedIn is solely business related and I felt that she had no right to be there. She had no need to view it other than being nosey. It would be nice to have a choice. With no ‘blocking’ function there’s definitely a feeling of being exposed. I guess their need to ‘look’ says more about them than it does about me.
Yes Nicole, I 100% agree with you. If they want to consume their days with checking out what’s going on, I guess that saying “the best revenge is to be awesome” could be made into a banner 🙂
I think Krishna said t beautifully…I know how I felt when I was being bullied on my blog a while back. And the best revenge being ‘awesome’ just fabulous. And that you are…cheers Di xxx
Thank you Di. I’ve also come to realise how ‘tough’ those are that bully from a keyboard. Thanks for your support as always xx