I recently joined TikTok (@imecommunity) and started posting about IME Community, life coaching, the difference between life coaching and therapy, my meet in the middle philosophy and my personal weight loss journey. I’m pretty hooked and find myself getting caught up in a TikTok trance a lot. Like, A LOT! I’m not going to tell you how many times a day. Too embarrassing!
My family is super annoyed with me because I’m always chasing them around the house showing them a cute little baby or toddler, middle-aged humans who still have moves (there’s hope for me), Grannies gone viral, TikTok docs, and on and on and on. Basically, I feel like I have a new community and sometimes these new TikTok friends feel like my family, especially when the ones I actually live with are driving me nuts (not watching my TikTok friends). Stay tuned for some dance moves coming up.
One of the things I’m noticing is there are a lot of courageous TikTokers’ who are willing to put themselves out there as they launch their health transformation journeys. Especially as 2021 is just getting going. It’s a time of New Year’s resolutions after all. I show major support by liking and posting, “You go!”, “You’ve got this!” “That goal’s in the mail!”
TikTok is a great platform for sharing and gives some accountability and self-monitoring which, research shows, works. There’s power in putting yourself out there and sharing your seemingly impossible goal, celebrating your success (slay that goal) that keeps you accountable to yourself. These TikTokers’ are creating their own measures of success, they have a plan for how they’re going to do it, and just by being open about their challenges, struggles, and journey, each of them is shining a light into their darkness, busting shame and stigma and saying, “I aM mE,” and I am not my weight. It’s automatic full self-acceptance. I think it’s beautiful. Self-love is your superpower to achieve weight and life goals and make your mark in the world! Sound familiar?
So, that’s all great, but what’s the fall-out for putting yourself out there? What I have been noticing recently is all my new TikTok friends who are slaying their weight, fitness and health goals are also catching some hate in the comments and it’s usually about their health. Haters throw them crap about diabetes and heart attacks and so on and so on. Health privacy alert!!!! Your health is no one’s business ever. Your health is 100% your business. Cyberbullying and shaming for health conditions someone may or may not have is a type of bullying I am noticing more of and we need to be intentional about ignoring it and not engaging. When you are being cyberbullied for your weight and someone is making an assumption about your health, you can let them know that your personal health is private and you would never discuss it with them, especially online, and you have no right to theirs. Or, block them and move on.
It’s always okay to defend yourself, but I’m going to make some suggestions that you may find helpful as you move forward with any goal. Because, what seems to be happening a lot is the hate comment gets posted and then the TikTok goal slayer doing their amazing seemingly impossible goal defends themselves. Basically, it’s a TikTok post that talks about how the hater doesn’t know them or anything about their health and then they list all of the things they are doing in their lives. It’s defending and again, is a beautiful thing. It just may not be effective and also may not be where you want to spend your time.
When we say haters gonna hate, what does that even mean? It lines up with a life coaching principle and a great life lesson, which is to let people be who they are (believe them when they’ve shown you) and my all-time favorite thing I’ve learned from life coaching over the last four years, to let them be wrong about you. I love this. I’m totally fine with people being wrong about me. It keeps me out of convince and control and defend mode. I know myself and I have full confidence and trust in myself and I now refuse to continue to give my power away by defending or convincing anyone about me.
It’s also really a beautiful thing to love yourself enough to set the record straight. I’m going to suggest deciding how you want to show up and where you want to put your attentional focus in 2021. We don’t have control over how other people respond to our bold goal slaying. Take the great comments and leave the others. When you take massive action in your life, you will get judgment from those who are actually judging themselves. If you want or feel like you need to respond, try a benign response like a funny emoji, or you can try, “I aM mE. UBU.”
So, let’s get after our seemingly impossible goals, keep showing up on TikTok and IME Community where you’ll find a supportive community of teens showing up and slaying their goals and chasing their dreams! Remember, I always have your back!