Usually I start out writing my blog posts because I have a message that I want to share, then I go looking for the right images to enhance my message, this time however it was quite the opposite, I saw this image and I really felt that I need to share a message about it with you.
As humans we are social creatures and we need to feel accepted and a part of a greater purpose. While we are building our business, sometimes we may feel that we are alone in our struggles or that we are stuck on something and we need to find a way to get past that in which is holding us back.
We need to be able to rely on the people around us to get through it, and so with that being said it is important to take a look at who you have in your corner. Look at all of your friendships and your family members, and think about whether they are supporting you, pulling you up or dragging you down.
Your dreams and your full potential can not compete with negative people or thoughts. In order for you to become the best you that you can be, you need to be focused on positivity and on making your dreams come true. We have all experienced a time in our lives when we were super excited about something in our lives, and we have had a “negative Nelly” who tried to drag us down. If you are not careful they could pull you down to their negative ways and your dreams will quickly fad. What I am asking you to do is difficult and challenging, but something worth having is worth fighting for. Those people who are negative and who are always telling you that it isn’t possible or that your dreams are silly or stupid are people that you need to remove from your life.
If you can walk away from those relationships you will be better off. Maybe you can’t cut them from your life completely, but the more distance you put between you and them the better it will be. I have seen people choose to make these tough decisions, and I have watched their businesses soar after. They become more confident and begin to find new and more positive relationships to fill where the negative ones once were.
If you have never thought about your relationships in this manner you might be frightened by my suggestion that perhaps you need to look at getting rid of some people, but think bout the times when you have had negative thoughts or ideas, and where did they come from? Do you think that it is harder to move forward with a plan if you are negative about the outcome? Now think about some of the dreams that you have for your life and the comments that people have made about them. I hope you had people in your life who were supportive of you and your dreams, I can imagine that it gave your dreams more power when you were given positive feedback. Perhaps you remember a time when your dreams were crushed by negative feedback from people in your life, then you will understand the importance of looking after good relationships and letting the other ones fall to the side.
A good friend is not one that has been here the longest, but it is one that will stand beside you through all of your ups and downs, one who listens to you and encourages you along the way. Just as you will be looking at your friends to determine who is most likely to support you and stand with you, it is also good for you to take inventory of what kind of friend you are to the people around you. Are you someone who is positive and energetic, or are you the “negative Nelly”? I think this question has the potential to really upset some of you, but it really is important. If you surround yourself with positive people, but you are not willing to be a positive person as well, they will eventually decide not to maintain that friendship with you. I am not suggesting that it is never okay to vent or to gripe a little about the things that are happening in your life, because we all do that, but make sure to have balance.
I was taught a really great visualization for this exact topic. Think of your relationships as each having their own emotional bank account. When you are positive you are depositing into that bank account, and when you are negative you are withdrawing. By looking at it this way you can see if your actions have a positive or negative affect on the account. Now here is where it gets tricky, each person in the relationship has their own idea on what a deposit is and what a withdrawal looks like. let’s say you love to be surprised and your friend throws you a surprise party, that would be a deposit in your friendship bank account. Now if that same friend had already told you that they hate surprise parties, but you felt like you would return the “favour” and have a surprise party for them anyway, they would see it as a withdrawal. Sometimes we do something that actually causes our relationships to go into a negative balance, and if it is an accident it is easily fixed, but if you keep doing it over and over again it becomes more difficult to be forgiven.
Understanding this concept of what others want from you, is very important. Not only in your personal life, but also in business. You need to listen to your friends and your clients the same way and try to do the things that they need to you to do in order to build up that emotional bank account.
I would love to hear what you think about this and if you have gone through this already, and how it helped you to move forward in your life.
