Am i being taken advantage of?

If you come off as a weak man, you will get the short end of the stick sometimes because people may assume you won't stand up for yourself.

Do you know the others on the relay? Describe their fitness..

I would do as I was asked. I would run as well as I possibly could. You are still a kid. IF you are angry about it, use it as fuel for the fire. Don’t even talk about it. Use it and be excellent.

The others are decent but not near my competition level, see i feel so guilty typing

I am a low 4:2x guy and im being paired with a non 2:10 800m breaker and some new random 400m runner who i don't know.

u sound like a "nice guy"

STEVE, THE ADDICT^^ wrote:

If you come off as a weak man, you will get the short end of the stick sometimes because people may assume you won't stand up for yourself.

Pretty much this. There is a difference between actually being nice and not being confident enough to be anything but nice. People of the latter type tend to get walked all over in life. They tell themselves it's because "nice guys finish last" but that just ain't true

But people have to be careful...

That's what created me.

As an omega in our family, i was badly mistreated by my father.

I believed I was nothing...

Until i wasn't.

I could do well in school.

I could do well in sports.

I could win fights.

I learned to be nice to those who deserved it.

I learned to hold my own on the street, the basketball court, in jobs and in chat modules.

I used to be a flight or freeze type but now it's always fight.

Nice guys can still see red.

You do you.

So basically what I'm getting is yes i was taken advantage of because of my inability to stand up for myself due to low confidence, this makes sense.

The problem is that i was taught to do everything told by others and that tougher people don't complain and just do. Obviously that isn't this case but i just can't differentiate what is sticking up for myself vs what is complaining. I'm starting to realize that i have been probably taken advantage of my whole high school life, people thought i was weak when i thought i was being tough and doing the right thing.

Deep down i am a extremely honest guy, i know that if i said what i truly thought every day i would cause fights all the time. Should i just be honest when i have to talk and just be myself?

Here's some great advice from a woman I met 30 years ago. It's so great that I still remember it today.

Her advice was simply to say no, then yes.

What she meant was that people were always imposing on her or her time and often, it was presented in such a way that it was very difficult to say no. Sometimes, it's really hard to articulate why you don't want to do something when the request comes out of the blue.

Her solution was to pre-decide that the answer to EVERY REQUEST was either "no" or "let me think about it and I'll get back to you."

This is a powerful verbal tool that puts you in control AND prevents you from coming across as a jerk. Pre-decide that no matter what the request is, you will say no first or you will buy time to answer. Buying time lets you think of why you can't shouldn't or won't do whatever it is.

If pressed, just say, "I can't give you an answer now. Let me get back to you." Or, "Well if you must have an answer now, it's no... but that might change. I'll get back to you if it does."