You are who you hang out with. It’s hard to deny that your personality shifts with each group of friends you spend your time with. You section yourself off into pieces in order to fit in more with the group. You might act wild and crazy with your college friends, or prim and proper with the PTA moms. These slight changes in your outward behavior are not necessarily a bad thing.
Some people drive you to be better. Their success and positivity is almost contagious. When you change your behavior to match theirs, you are creating positive change within yourself.
The cause for concern is when you spend your time with people who only bring you down. These are the three types of friends from whom it’s time to move on.
1. The Complainer
We all know someone who just won’t stop complaining. At a party they only talk about who isn’t there, or how bad the music is. They complain about their health all the time; every ache and pain is chronicled in detail.
Nothing is ever going right for this person and it becomes exhausting trying to find ways to cheer them up. When spending time with this person becomes something that you dread rather than look forward to, it’s time to put an end to the friendship.
Being around negative people who won’t make the necessary changes to lead a happy life will only worsen your own mood and attitude and bring you down.
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2. The Loser
Some people just have a cloud over them. No matter what they do, they can’t catch a break. They lose job after job, always need money, and life just seems to be a burden for them. Their constant negativity brings more and more misfortune.
No matter how much you try to help that person, it will do no good. Unless they can change their thinking, their life will never change. While it can be difficult to give up on a friendship, sometimes you need to remove the sources of negativity in order to move forward with your own positivity.
Two quotes fit the bill here, “You are the company you keep,” and “If you want to be successful, you need to hang out with successful people.” Be around people who move forward, positively inspire and support you to be the best you that you can be, that add value to your life, that you can learn from and you will succeed.
3. The Troublemaker
Every parent fears their child bringing home a new best friend with a dark side. That’s because no matter how good your child is, peer pressure is incredibly hard to resist. It’s the same for adults. Maybe you have a friend who thinks nothing of driving while drunk, shoplifting, or doing drugs.
If that friend can’t or won’t change their actions, you have to cut them off. You can’t sacrifice your own integrity by allowing their behavior to continue and be rewarded with your friendship. This relationship will bring you nothing but trouble and negativity.
It may go against your suppositions to remove friendships from your life. Lillian Whiting said, “To be rich in friends is to be poor in nothing.” However, consider what a friendship is.
Friendships are relationships with people who aren’t your family that add to your life in positive ways. If you dread speaking to a friend, if you avoid their calls and texts for days because you are working up the energy to deal with their drama, if you find yourself complaining about that person to your spouse or to another friend, then that is not a friend.
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That person is a drain on your energy. Your energy is too precious to allow negative forces or people to draw it from you. Surround yourself with people who mirror your own energy back to you. Concentrate on those friendships that light up your life and let go of the ones that darken it.
