Are You Being Taken Advantage Of? Here’s the Solution.

Have you ever felt taken advantage of? I’m not talking about being lied to or stolen from, I’m talking about situations when we helped someone out and felt they expected more than they should or they seemed ungrateful for how much we did for them.

Whether by a friend, family member, spouse, or coworker, most of us have felt like we have been taken advantage of at one point or another. These situations can be quite frustrating to experience, but I have discovered the solution.

Time and time again, I have realized being taken advantage of is simply a need for two things:

boundaries

and

communication.

It is an opportunity for us to use our words and set appropriate boundaries.

But let’s be clear, If we offer to help someone out, we should do so without the expectation they will pay you back for it. If we expect them to pay us back, we must be clear from the start of our expectations.

We should never expect payment for our kindness.

If we are expecting something in return we need to understand this is not a gift.

This is a debt.

Secondly, we need to understand how situations change. Maybe we offered to help someone out by babysitting, paying a bill, house sitting, helping them at work, assisting them financially, or any other assistance, and when we agreed, we were happy to help.

We offered our assistance with a pure heart, no strings attached, but then, at some point something changed. Our once kind offer changed into something we resent the person for.

We need to understand this does not necessarily mean this person has done anything wrong. It simply means that it is time for us to have a conversation about the agreement moving forward.

It is time to set a boundary.

Unfortunately, many people really suck at having conversations and setting new boundaries. This is a vital skill we all need to learn if we don’t want to feel taken advantage of.

You see, it is simple to never be taken advantage of again:

First, don’t expect payment for helping someone out.

Second, whenever someone is expecting you to give more than you are willing to give, reassess the agreement and have a conversation.

Lastly, don’t help if you aren’t actually wanting to help.

It really is as simple as that.

As humans, we like to blame people. We like for our problems to be other people’s fault. Sometimes our problems are caused by other people; however, when it comes to being taken advantage of this is not the problem of someone else. If we have been taken advantage of there is only one person to blame.

Ourselves.

Because we were unwilling to say “no” or “not anymore”.

I invite you to never feel taken advantage of again. I invite you to say these words,

“No, I will not do that for you.”

You see my friends, we hold the key to so many of our frustrations and annoyances in life, the question is will we do anything about it?

Are You Measuring Up?

“Haley, I don’t think you see yourself very clearly,” a friend said to me.

I had just uttered a self-evaluation of my physical appearance. It wasn’t a particularly encouraging or positive utterance. This wasn’t the first time she told me she didn’t think I saw myself accurately.

She is the type of friend who will tell me when I am wrong but has always encouraged me in who I am.

This time her observation stuck with me.

Did I see myself clearly?

And if not, why?

I began to think back on times that I have struggled with who I am.

Whether it was something I was doing or the way I appeared. I have often felt negative about myself and been hard on myself for feeling like I should be more than I am.

At times, it felt so obvious that I was falling short of “the standard”.

What standard, you ask? I don’t even know. The unspoken standard of who I should be. The one that I have pressured on myself and the one that I have felt pressured by the world.

Why is it so hard to feel content with who we are and the choices we make?

Life is filled with a lot of intricate experiences that complicate our perception of who we are. We learn from a young age who we are “supposed” to be and the life we “should” live. We spend much of our early years learning rules and expectations to function in society. (Some of us embrace these expectations more than others.) We also learn quickly that if we perform “well” we get more praise and acceptance than when we fail.

We are taught a standard for social acceptance and these guidelines are easy to become our standard for self-acceptance.

It is easy to feel that when others accept us that means we are “good”, but when people disapprove of us than we are “bad”. Sadly, this is a very unreliable measuring tool of our value because everyone has such varying perceptions.

It is quite easy to lose ourselves while we try to meet everyone’s expectations.

It seems clear to me that most of us have inaccurate views of ourselves. We are often our own worst critic and spend too much time thinking about our failures. We hold on to the worst things that people have said to us and forget to remember the best.

For years, I have been on a journey of learning to live in grace for myself and release the expectations of how I thought everything would turn out… including myself.

I am learning how to look at my flaws and say, “Yep, that is not the most attractive feature I have, but that’s alright.”

I am not looking to create a mindset that says I am perfect.

I am looking to create a mindset that knows I am not perfect, but I am perfectly ok with it.

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