I Am Not Kryptonite

I'm a pretty easy going person, I go with the flow, get on with what needs to be done and just, well, do it.  Sometimes though, I think people get muddled up and confuse 'going with the flow' with 'pushover and/or doormat', or at least this is what I've been finding lately.

There are and have been people in my life who have this expectation of me to drop everything for them without making a fuss.  'Making a fuss' is not my style, which they know all too well and which I think at times, they take advantage of.  The thing is, I do go with the flow, I can admit that, because I like being there for people and helping them out if or when they need it.  This being said, I am only human and therefore can't always drop everything just to suit someone else.  That's why on the rare occasions when I don't go with the flow and say 'no', certain people don't react well because they've become so accustomed to me saying 'yes'. 

Now me being the 'going with the flow' type, I always say 'no' in the nicest way possible, I don't shout or say it rudely, I simply say 'no', give my (legitimate, may I add!) reason and apologise - but this is not enough for some people.  Some people expect me to grovel or rearrange my life just to accommodate their own, which, I mean, come on - would they do the same for me?  Probably not, and they know that all too well but they like the power.  The power to know that they have some element of control over me and when they realise that in fact the power isn't there and was never really there in the first place, well, they can't really handle that because power is what makes them feel popular and gives their self-esteem, confidence and ego a real boost. 

We all like to feel powerful, don't get me wrong, but that power shouldn't come from someone else.  If your power is based on someone else then you become too self-reliant on other people to make yourself feel good, so that when you lose that power over someone then suddenly you don't feel so great about yourself because things haven't gone your way.  When I feel powerful, it's not through exerting (or attempting to) exert power over someone else, it comes down to achieving personal goals, from the simplest and most ridiculous thing such as doing 100 skips with the skipping rope (honestly, in that moment,  I felt like Thor and I was surprised when I looked in the mirror afterwards and didn't see Chris Hemsworth's scarily attractive appearance peeking back at me!) or when I won the French prize when I was in year 9 at school.  Even writing this blog post, right now, makes me feel powerful and that's because I am taking control of MY life and no one else's. 

The truth is, these 'powerful' individuals who think that they can control you, will in truth never really be able to do that because they aren't powerful, they possess a weak power, a power reliant on other people - there's no strength to that and it will inevitably crumble. 

Everyone should feel powerful but it shouldn't be dependent on other people, that's not true power.  True power comes from self-belief and yourself and nobody else (I am aware that that sounds incredibly cheesy but it's also incredibly true.).

So yes, I may go with the flow but that doesn't mean that you can control me because I am powerful, I just don't drain other people for it. I am not kryptonite.