My patience was tested so many times while making this episode, but I came out victorious and learned how to speak into my microphone without sounding like I’d been running a marathon for five hours nonstop.
The second win was even more surprising. While recording this episode, I wanted to promote my second eBook, but it wasn’t yet live on Amazon. Then I thought, “Why not just try publishing it?” So I did.
To my surprise, the book went live on Amazon, and I was able to include it in this episode after all.
Looking back, I don’t know why I hadn’t tried sooner. I had already published my first book there, but for some reason it never occurred to me to do the same with the second one until after I finished recording.
I’m glad I took the chance.
And if you’re interested, feel free to check out the book.
Now, on to the episode.
In this episode, I reflect on the idea that kindness should be balanced with wisdom. Through a series of personal stories, I explore how our strengths can sometimes be used against us and why it is important to recognize unhealthy patterns before reacting. I share experiences that taught me the importance of pausing before jumping to conclusions, questioning my assumptions, and being careful about how I judge other people’s experiences.
I also talk about moments when I realized that what seems obvious to me may not be obvious to someone else. The episode includes a very personal reflection on a difficult period in my life marked by emotional exhaustion and repeated hospital visits. Out of that pain came the inspiration for my book, The Friendless Friend. I close the episode by encouraging listeners to see disappointments as experiments rather than disasters because sometimes the unexpected outcome turns out better than the one we originally wanted.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t be kind, but you should also be smart.
Paraphrased quote, my dad to me.
This is Bathroom Musings and I am your host Nessa Haggers.
Episode 5, Kaigaba.
Years ago, I was about to go back to school when my dad reminded me of an incident that I still can’t remember.
During exams in primary school, my neighbour’s pen stopped working and being the good Samaritan, I decided to share my pen with my neighbour.
I’d write a bit, hand the pen over, they’d do the same, hand me back.
And we were doing this successfully until a teacher caught us and still proceeded to tell my dad about it when he came for school runs.
Now, as I said, I can’t remember, but because parents never forget, plus my dad had no reason to lie to me about this, I believe my dad.
I didn’t lose anything by sharing my pen because I actually passed that exam, but I can’t say the same for my family friend whose experience was used as a cautionary tale for we kids back then.
This family friend went for a job interview and his fellow job hunter came without a jacket.
This guy begged my family friend for his jacket, stating that since he was going to go in first, he’d go in, get his interview done, come out and return the jacket safely.
My family friend, being the Samaritan, agreed, handed his jacket over to this stranger.
The guy went in.
Minutes later, my family friend was called upon to get his own interview done, but this guy wasn’t out yet, so he had to do his interview without his jacket.
Unfortunately, he didn’t get the job and I don’t know if the lack of jacket was the reason, but the way the story was told back then, the elders made it look like it was because of the lack of jacket.
All of this came flooding back while I was listening to Mark Manton talk about strengths and their very unsavoury other side.
I’ll leave a link to the video, pretty good video, go check it out.
I was thinking about how strengths can become weaknesses.
Unfortunately, I’ve been a victim of this.
One sunny Thursday afternoon, a teenager came to me and told me that their teacher’s assistant was bullying them.
You guys, I saw oxblood, because red is an understatement.
I went crazy.
I said, what did you just say?
And they confirmed what I heard, was their teacher’s assistant was bullying them.
God forgive me for the things I wanted to do to that person.
But before dealing with this person, I decided to, quote unquote, put a collar across.
So, I asked for the person’s number, and someone in their environment, not the teenager now, gave me the teacher’s assistant’s number, and I called.
And thank God, the call didn’t go through.
You know I’m saying thank God soon.
So, the same person who gave me the first number said they could get me the second number, and while I was waiting for it, I was fuming, I was ranting, I was angry.
The teenager came and said, I made it all up.
This person didn’t bully me.
And before you think they were saying it because they were scared of the repercussion, no.
Turned out that they lied.
I felt like I was thrown into a very cold river, or maybe even ocean.
I felt cold, numb, and disorientated.
I wasn’t understanding what I was hearing.
I said, you see, what did you just say?
And they said, yeah, I lied.
I said, so what if my call went through?
So, I would have made a complete fool of myself.
I’ve never felt so stupid.
I was disappointed, and I was saddened by that experience.
Now, did I learn?
Not yet.
Not yet.
Because something else happened.
There’s this person that would always complain to me when a particular group of people would annoy them, and because I had the power to, I’d immediately take action.
But I noticed over and over again, this person would always over exaggerate.
I’m not using the word always figuratively.
They would always over exaggerate.
So, I decided to take a different approach, and I stopped reacting when they would complain.
And they didn’t like it.
This happened first time, second time.
In fact, it got so bad that we had a full-blown, heated argument.
It was that bad that the aftereffects lasted for maybe two to three weeks.
And this was because I simply refused to react the way they wanted me to.
And since then, since that argument, they’ve not come to me with those complaints anymore, and I don’t miss it one bit.
I am happy.
The truth is that, unfortunately, people will exploit your strengths for their own advantage to your own disadvantage.
And it’s not like these people are bad people.
No, I’ve done it.
You’ve done it.
They are just sometimes selfish.
And if I can’t use your strengths to help myself, what’s stopping me from doing it?
So, we’re not playing judge here.
It’s just a call out of things like this.
And as my dad said to me, I’m saying to you, I’m not saying you shouldn’t be kind, but you should also be smart.
Am I saying that my strengths won’t be used against me?
I hope not.
Am I saying that I will never fall for this?
I still hope I don’t.
We’re talking about patterns.
Like, I noticed that person’s pattern of over-exaggerating.
I noticed something about me that I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, and I’m not saying this for you to judge.
I’m just saying this for you to notice it in your own life, because I believe that you also, you’re guilty of this.
So, I read this book, The Silent Patient, and it was truly amazing.
I’ll leave a link to the book in the description.
Go check it out.
No affiliate or whatever.
Just, it’s simply a good book.
And I didn’t know who the bad guy was till the end.
Not just me, but millions of people.
So, I stumbled on this booktuber talking about the book, and the booktuber was like, how are you guys telling me that you didn’t know that this person was the bad guy?
I knew from the very beginning.
Oh, I didn’t comment, but I was like, I rolled my eyes.
I’m like, who is this for?
You can’t lie?
Oh, guy, hell no.
Why are you lying?
Who are you trying to impress?
So, while I was trying to put this episode together, I remembered this thing.
And I still ask myself, but who am I really to say that that guy was lying?
Because he could just be good at detecting stuff like that.
And for someone who hates it when someone calls my truth.
Okay, I don’t use the word my truth because it’s been bastardised.
So, for someone who doesn’t like it when what I know is true, someone else is saying is a lie.
I shouldn’t really be calling the person’s truth or what they’re saying is the truth, a lie.
Let me explain.
I was in an environment where there was a ceiling fan, but I was still feeling hot.
Thankfully, I had my rechargeable fan.
So, I was using it.
So, I thought about it and had the guts to tell me that the heat I was feeling was all in my head.
I said, are you okay?
How dare you say that it’s in my head?
I’m telling you I’m feeling hot.
You’re telling me that the heat I’m feeling is in my head?
Are you in my body?
Are you me?
So, for someone who doesn’t like it, why should I do to someone else?
And as I was thinking about this, I said, oh wait, there are times when you have this gut feeling without evidence, but you just have this gut feeling that this person is lying.
So, it doesn’t mean that you don’t call them out on what you perceive to be a lie because you wouldn’t like it if someone else called the truth you’re saying a lie.
Are these 3am thoughts?
Maybe.
Doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t call people out if you feel like they’re lying.
Nope.
Because I will still do it.
But it’s something to think on.
Yeah, maybe mellowed down a bit when you’re famously saying that someone is lying without evidence.
Maybe that’s the takeaway here.
Now, talking about truths though, I have something to say.
It’s more of a confession.
On Saturday, between 2am and 3 foot something am, the world was fast asleep.
But I was awake, sad, downcast, and tired.
Emotionally and mentally tired.
Maybe even physically tired, even though I didn’t engage in any manual labour.
My pillow was soaked with the tears rolling down my cheeks.
I didn’t want to go see the doctor that day.
I was so tired of the weekly hospital visits.
I just wanted it to end.
I didn’t want to go see the doctor that day because I was scheduled to go see him that day.
I hated, I despised those hospital visits.
And I was praying that morning.
I was like, God, Jesus, I beg you, make this stop, please.
I know you can.
And yes, he did.
But at that moment, I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.
For someone who doesn’t really open up easily, at that moment I was willing to talk to any random person.
I just wanted to get what I was feeling off my chest.
Now, you think that I didn’t have people to talk to.
No, I actually had people that would listen if I’d called them by that time to talk about what I was going through.
But I didn’t make the call.
Instead, I was suffering alone until the idea for the book, The Friendless Friend, was born.
Yes, it was born from my own pain.
So, real-life stories, fictionalised.
Maybe you can tell which fiction story there is mine, but this book is exactly what the name says and the subtitle.
Reading it, you might see yourself in those stories and learn a lot too.
Sometimes, that good friend you’ve always wanted is already your friend, but you’re just not seeing it.
You can get the book on Amazon.
I’ll leave the link in the description.
If Amazon doesn’t work for you, you can go to my website, shop.nessahuggers.com.
That’s shop.nessahuggers.com.
Your payments are securely processed by Flutterwave, so you have nothing to fear.
Feel free to check out the terms and conditions, priority policies, and all of those good, good, good, good stuff on that page as well.
But get the book.
I’ll close this off with something I’m proud of.
It was an adventure, but I’m proud I did this.
I asked someone to help me get my toiletries.
In fact, because I wanted to get the exact soap, I kept the container of the last one I used.
When the person got to the store and called me, I still drilled it into them.
Get me this soap.
They were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, got it.
You’re the one still going.
They came back with something different.
The same brand, but a different type of soap.
I was so angry.
Do you know how frustrating it is when you’ve given clear instructions and the outcome is rubbish?
AI, I am watching you.
But yeah, I wasn’t happy at all.
But then while I was ranting, I had this thought.
Why don’t you turn this into an experiment?
You might never know that.
You might never know if this would be your new favourite soap.
Just see it as an experiment.
It’s not a do or die affair.
You can always get another soap if you hate it.
And so I did.
It helped take the sting of the disappointment and it turned out to be a good soap.
It wasn’t bad at all.
So yeah, think of a pet peeve and maybe turn it into an experiment.
Someone got the order wrong.
Yeah, be angry, be frustrated.
But can you also see it as an experiment?
You could just end up finding your next best meal or the worst meal you’ve ever had.
It would seem like a good story.
Thank you so much for staying with me to get the book and share this episode with someone.
And until next time, see ya!