Could you imagine having to live in a world alone? Who would you be? Without the guidance or love from family, friends, teachers, fellow classmates or teammates, coworkers, etc. what kind of person do you think you would be? Would you be the same person you are today or different?
Have you ever looked around yourself at your friend circle and the people you spend the most time with? Have you ever noticed that you guys tend to have the same slang, use the same phrases, have all these inside jokes, and act very similar? That is because we are a mixture of our 5-6 closest friends. When we are surrounded by a certain group of people that we admire, we eventually develop similar characteristics and similar interests and we invest or time doing things altogether.
In my life, I have been surrounded by many groups; family, friends, dance teams, cheer teams, close family friends, etc. From each group I have learned many things that add to my personality and characteristics. My family taught me about unconditional love and chasing dreams no matter how out of reach they may seem. My friends have taught me about importance of competition and also supporting people in achievements even if the achievements are not yours. My dance team always had open arms and families who welcomed you into their home. My cheer team was always the people who saw you in your worst possible moments but did nothing but love and support you. The teams I coached show me the importance of being a role model and understanding the influence you have on people. These groups each evolved me into who I am and I consider them my greatest circles of influence thus far.
But, there have also been people in my life that created negativity, toxicity and more hardships than happiness. These people brought their negativity upon me, I felt more stressed and mad more often, these people affected me in bad ways and they were always too busy looking at the bad to ever be the least bit of happy. They started to have a strain on me and I realized I was starting to create their negative tendencies to invoke negative energy into the world and their bad decisions were starting to wear off on me. When I realized myself taking on these tendencies, I knew I needed to cut these relationships and friendships out of my life. This hit me hard recently when I realized I was a part of a program that stood for a lot of things that I disagreed with and it took a toll on me. I was embedded in a group of people who would rather see me tore down than built up, a group of people who prided on picking out the flaws in people and then were defended when brought to the attention of people who actually had the power to prevent the problems but never did. It created a bubble of negativity and I was stuck in it. The only way to get out of it was to really take a step back and start addressing each piece before I became someone who I never wanted to be or someone who others associated with people who I did not want to be like. So, that is what I did. I took advantage of the biggest circle of influence I have, myself. Then, I used my autonomy over who I want to be to establish my ground and get myself out of the bubble. It was hard to get out and it took being blunt to do so, but doing it helped minimize almost all of the negative energy that I was absorbing at the time.
Using my personal autonomy was a huge step for a girl who lost all her confidence and a girl who could not really stand seeing herself being altered by people who never deserved the ability to change who she was or how she saw herself. As a result, I created steps to a “foundation ladder” that would eventually help me get back up to who I wanted to be and I took that first step when I confronted the negativity head on. Since then, I have continued to take many steps on my ladder and they each contributed to helping build myself back up, creating a positive environment, making new friends that impact me in a positive way, getting out of my comfort zone to discover other things in the world, and trying to be a person that more people want to be like or be friends with.
There are so many steps you can take when trying to diminish negativity but looking at the people you surround yourself with can be a huge step in getting rid of toxicity. Sometimes, it is easy to talk to those people and maybe help them notice their negative energy that they give off. But most often, people cannot take the honesty or do not know how to put an end to their tendencies, and even though it may be difficult, it may be easier to put an end to the friendship and come back to it later if and when the opportunity arises. The worst part is when you are the negative friend though, you are not as good at picking out the bright side or you feel like you have the worst luck in the world. There is still ways to go about this too, try looking at the bright side more often, find the lesson to be learned, pick out the positive thing that happened even if it was tiny and soon you will start realizing that holding your negative energy is much harder than letting it go and replacing it with positive energy. People will want to be around you more, they will want to develop your perspective and they will appreciate your energy so much more.
So, if you are struggling with something about yourself or you feel like you are starting to act in a way that you dislike, take a close look at those you surround yourself with most often and you will notice you guys are a lot more similar than it may seem. Invest time into making yourself someone you appreciate more and let those around you develop the same idea.
Breed positivity from deep in your soul and kill the world with kindness, the negatives really are not as important as we tend to identify them as. They do help us grow when we find paths to turn them into positives but it is so much more important to be apart of an environment that is uplifting, positive, caring and honest even if it means being the first person to create that in your environment.
Empower the environment that surrounds you more than you let it empower you,
JoVee
The Power of Me 