“The gift of betrayal” part two is a supplement to part 1 so don’t read further until you’ve read The Gift of Betrayal Part I.
“.. We live in a world of hypocrisy, where people greet you with a smile whilst holding a knife in your back, where people hide their true intentions to “survive,” and this life is nothing more than a very elaborate play, we live in.
This world of hypocrisy, is where the coward pretends to be brave, the jerk smart, and the person smiling the most is actually the devoid of any kind emotion. In this world, love is not love, love is fear, and fear is admiration.
At a young age, people are taught to pretend and cheat so much that the pursuit of their own dreams is alien and where in one day, an expression of affection becomes an offense, and the most cruel of mistreatment is considered the most common of the gifts…..”
Following on from my letter to you on why people who betray, cheat and lie to you should be considered gifts. I share the following from my own life. I share these snippets not for my own vainglory, nor for sympathy, nor to embarrass people who have “hurt” me.
These snippets are shared to help you better understand that you are not alone. Many other successful people understand what you’ve been through as they too have had their own set of betrayals on their journey to successful lives.
I also wanted to share with you that although the betrayal is extremely painful at the time, that betrayal actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. So here are the blessings.
The gift of betrayal – humiliation by a colleague
A colleague at Kodak used to tell me how wonderful I was and take me for drinks. However, at the board meetings, he would take great delight in publicly sabotaging and humiliating me by letting everyone know why my design and product proposals would fail and how his solutions were so much better.
Although I suffered for months, I learnt to value the input of negative people. After about the fifth time, he did this to me, I began to ask his opinion months in advance of any product meetings. So when he tried his corporate bully tactics, I was already prepared to deal with his perspective on the risks.
His sabotaging behaviour helped me incredibly in business and I was soon promoted to senior manager in charge of EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa). A decade later, without this experience and lessons learned, I may not have been propelled to the forefront of the IT security arena.
This negative, bullying colleague was a GIFT.
The gift of betrayal – redundancy by a director’s politicking
A while ago, I used to be a senior manager in charge of IT products at a subsidiary of Kodak. Unfortunately, my director changed to one who wanted to be CEO at the expense of the other directors.
In order to sabotage other directors, he would issue crazy orders to myself and others who reported directly to him. For example, “Ben I don’t want you to talk to sales people whilst they are on the 3rd floor (where I worked)”.
So to circumvent his insanity, I used to go down to the second floor and discuss with the sales people the market feedback on our products. Ducking and diving this director’s politicking soon caused him to have to make me redundant.
Here is the result of the constructive dismissal caused by the director’s politicking. After a period of time on benefits, I began a company and working for myself. Working for myself and the companies I later grew taught me about being a CEO, a CFO, marketing, products and a variety of other skills.
If it had not been for that director, I would not have the ability to work to understand financial figures, the power of marketing, sales and managing at a senior executive level. I would not have the business acumen and the ability to move as quickly as I can in the face of an oncoming disaster.
I would not have any of these skillsets because I would probably have remained in the corporate world. Nor would I have ever understood the freedoms of being a business owner.
This power-hungry director was a GIFT to me.
The gift of betrayal – a business ban caused by jealous contractors
One of my best customers only employs contractors. The customer has a department responsible for the contracts issued to teachers to write and create materials for them. A group of other contractors spread rumours about me, to prevent me from writing and gaining royalties from this department.
One month later, I was asked by Microsoft to write a book which I would not have had the bandwidth to do had I been writing for the materials department of my other customer.
The importance of that book was that it paid five times more than any of the work I would have done for the other company. As a result of that book, Microsoft also asked me to write for many of their other divisions. Now I have a great set of marketing tools should I wish to write further books in the technical arena.
These sabotaging contractors were all GIFTS.
The gift of betrayal – rumours and lies in the dance world
I love dance. I have many really good supportive friends in the dance world. Unfortunately, there is also an element in the dance world which is full of vainglory to do with ability, looks, contacts, and a much larger amount of hypocrisy than other areas I work and party in.
For a variety of reasons, which I won’t go into in this article, rumours were spread about me throughout the Latin London UK Scene. Some of these rumours are still reverberating in closed doors whenever my name is mentioned.
These lies and rumours resulted in my losing my girlfriend, and several people using bully tactics on me on the dance floor. As a result, I took off abroad for a while.
However, the mature people who knew me strengthened their relationship with me. Several members of the dance group sought me out. Some members shared about one particular rumour and why they felt the group leaders had behaved badly in the situation.
The beautiful people doing the back-stabbing helped me develop deeper relationships with the people that truly mattered. Without that back-stabbing, I would never have known who these fantastic people were or developed deeper relationships.
These so-called “backstabbing hypocritical” people were GIFTS.
The gift of betrayal – debt by a blood relative’s ego
A close relative who put me in a huge debt and took approximately £1,000,000 in property and money from me. In addition, to protect their ego, a lot of lies were spread about me within my family.
If this had never happened to me I would never have learned how to make money faster, I would never have learned just how many wonderful people I have in my life. People who financially supported me in a variety of ways by investment or loans just to help me get out and survive those months.
This proud competitive relative was a GIFT.
Now….. I would never want any of you to think, for even one minute that things were easy after the betrayal. Close friends had to put up with my constant anger and ranting. Others would coax me to come out from under my bedroom covers. Trying to forgive. Trying to move on. Neither were easy under several of these circumstances.
At the time of writing, I am having to resolve matters with two separate deals which has left me in debt of £200,000. Both people involved know what they did was wrong. This unexpected debt has caused me to have to pull out of a great agreement.
However today, I just know, really know in my heart, that these two people are gifts. And in my heart, I thank them for the opportunity. An opportunity I cannot yet see, but will celebrate in advance, and thank those two friends for each being a gift.
If you have been recently hurt by family, a close friend, or a colleague. I hope that that when your tears have stopped. That when your anger has receded. That when the humiliation has no more effect and you can walk out of your house with your head up high. I hope that you will be able to see the gift that your betrayers have given you. And I hope that you will celebrate.
Namaste,
Ben
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Other related articles you may enjoy reading:
How to eliminate betrayal with PANDAS – Let’s face it betrayal is hard medicine. In this article we show you how to minimise the number of people who betray and scam you.
The Gift of Betrayal Part I – A letter to anyone has ever been betrayed and how and why that betrayal will propel you to success.
The gift of betrayal – A book predominantly aimed at ladies who have been cheated on but has many useful thoughts for anyone who has suffered
The gift of forgiveness – A short article that explains how forgiveness saves you.
