By A new year is coming! A new year is a fresh start. A new year gives us a great opportunity to stop and look at what we have and what we want — in our careers, our lives and our relationships.
You get to decide who to include in your circle. Most of us have people in our lives who lift us up and encourage us. Those are the people to spend your time with in 2017!
There are other people in our lives who bring us down and wear us out. They could be friends or co-workers or people you’ve known socially for years. They could be family members.
We may have to see people who dim our flames, but we can limit our time with them.
We can set boundaries with them, too. We can speak up and tell them when they’ve crossed a line by becoming too critical of us or talking about other people behind their backs.
Now is a great time to get a journal and start writing in it. Write down the names of people who grow your flame and people who dim your flame. Make a commitment to increase the amount of time you spend with the flame-growing people, and limit the time you spend with the flame-dimming ones!
In 2017, don’t let negative people kill your flow. You have a path and a purpose that is important not just to you but to everyone you influence and inspire — and you may never know just how much power you have to inspire others.
They are inspired not just by your guidance and encouragement for them personally but also by watching you move through situations in your own life.
There will always be people in your sphere who don’t want you to change and grow.
They want you to stay the way you were when they first met you. Some of them may actively resist your efforts to evolve. They’ll tell you “Be content with what you have!” or even “Who are you to have big dreams?”
Shedding friends who no longer support you is a difficult but essential part of personal growth.
You might work in an atmosphere where it’s considered “cool” to be negative and “uncool” to be positive.
You might become an outsider if you stop listening to your friends or co-workers’ negative chatter. You might find yourself left out of conversations when you stop reinforcing your workmates’ negativity.
You might get the silent treatment or even face overt hostility when you smile and change the subject instead of agreeing with your negative colleagues that the deck is stacked against them and there’s nothing to be done about it.
The more altitude you get on your life and career, the more you’ll see that your negative friends or co-workers stay stuck in their negativity because it’s easier to do that than to take a step out of their comfort zone.
That’s okay! You don’t need to teach your friends or co-workers or other negative people in your life how to step into their power. You will teach them just by taking those steps yourself. You will lead by example.
You don’t have to stay in a WhatsApp group that focuses only on Negativity and Personal attacks. And if you are the Admin of a WhatsApp group be wary of those that post Negative hate messages that are indirectly referring to a friend they have a fall out with. Tell them to take their sadness to another platform. Nobody deserves to wake up to hate and negative messages on their phones.
It’s easy to blame your boss or your management team for your problems. It’s harder to take responsibility for your situation and begin to make changes that are within your control. When you start, you’ll inspire someone else to take a step, also.
Let the negative people in your life slip away to the perimeter of your awareness. Maybe one day they will see their own participation in their struggles, but you are not waiting for that day to come — because they are on their own path.
You have a path to follow yourself — and not a moment to lose!
