Not anymore.
“But doesn’t it make you angry?”
“Not anymore.”
“It’s a waste of energy.”
“I am so mad at what they did to you!”
“That they treated you like that.”
“You deserve so much more.”
I’m sitting in a funky café with one of my favourite humans visiting from San Francisco. We don’t see each other often. Once a year if lucky. Turns out I am - It’s been twice in 2025 and I’m getting her up to speed on the last few months.
She had seen my face on the front cover of The Australian. From San Francisco. On Apple News.
And was trying to reconcile how I was so calm, accepting and allowing of a legally binding document being leaked to the media, along with my private number.
What she saw as a significant breach of trust and respect that angered and embittered, I chose to see as the nudge I needed from the universe. To leave the perceived ‘security and safety of 9-5 executive leadership land’, back myself and start my solopreneurial journey to a new position of peace, power and freedom.
She knows me better than most. Is highly protective of me. And is fiercely loyal.
Without pity or patronisation she asked me the question with the same tone of incredulity I get asked over and over:
“How does this keep happening to you?”
It’s a valid question. However, the more important question to ask is why. Not how.
My answer has evolved and changed, as much as I have. My response was subtle, provocatively unexpected. It happens to be my accountable truth:
“It’s not about them. The common denominator here, is me.”
And it is. Despite her trying to convince me otherwise. Like all my tribe do.
And here’s why: until very recently, I’ve allowed myself to be treated poorly and unacceptably by more people than I care to admit. I’ve said yes, when I meant no. I’ve said nothing when I knew I needed to speak out. I’ve stayed in the shadows when I was supposed to step forward and shine bright. I’ve lived in fear of being ‘found out’ when I had nothing to hide.
And all of that is on me. Not them.
It’s ironic the phrase “teaching people how to treat us” is attributed to Dr Phil, who, no disrespect intended, I’m not a fan. Proves the point that our greatest teachers are often those we like the least. That we don’t need to even like someone to learn life-changing lessons from them.
We all get a choice. To read the same story, in the same paper, with the same words. But from different physical and figurative vantage points. That choosing to view the person who leaked my story as a blessing, not curse, does not make me better or worse than them. It makes me grateful for the gifted opportunity of a long-overdue redraft of my “how to treat me” manual.
With new terms and conditions. Where confidentiality is not optional. Trust isn’t disposable. Disloyalty and betrayal have consequences. And the closing clause states: I no longer take responsibility for what was never mine.
Not anymore.
We are all authors of manuals and teachers of treatment.
So, ask yourself: how am I teaching others how to treat me? Is my manual the latest version?
Because the true price of not making the upgrade today, is a fraction of the cost you’re likely to pay tomorrow.
H2BH 020/365
