Today is a holiday here in our province, and in some places in Canada it is called Family Day. Although it started out as Family Day here, we now call it Louis Riel Day.
No matter what you call the day, because we are all home it is time to spend with family and friends.
Family is generally considered the people who are blood related to you, but what about those people who you call friends? Perhaps you are an only child like me, and you have created friendships that serve as siblings? I know that for me the desire to have a sibling as a child was huge. When I was growing up my cousins were my “siblings” until we moved away. There I found some great people to become friends with and they are my “siblings” still today.
I don’t believe that you have to be blood related in order for you to be family, the idea of looking after one another, and supporting each other throughout your lifetimes seems to be enough to create a family bond.
Thinking about the people that you hold dear to your heart, it is important to make room for them in your life. This might mean that you sit down for coffee and schedule all the times in the year when you will get together, or that you simply say yes next time they call you to participate in an event.
Today we honour families, all of our families, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Families aren’t perfect and sometimes they drive us crazy, and in fact the closer the blood relations the easier it is to be driven insane by them (or so it seems from my experience)
Who ever you view as family is a decision that only you can make.
During the course of building your life and your business we talk about how important it is to surround yourself with positive people.
This topic is very touchy especially when it leads us to discussion around negative family members. Somehow choosing to distance yourself from someone you consider family is incredibly more difficult than someone you view as a friend or customer.
I think that the reason why is because with family we feel an obligation to be “faithful” till death do us part. Much like marriage vows. I venture to say that our bond with family might even be stronger than marriage vows in some instances.
Regardless of how we feel about the decision to put distance between us and the negative people that are in our lives, the truth is that by keeping the negative people in our lives we are perpetuating the belief in our selves that we do not deserve to be treated well, and that being treated poorly is okay.
These low self worth beliefs will keep you from being successful and they will drain your energy to the point that you will not be able to function at the highest level, then that will translate into a business where you aren’t as successful as you would like and you will be stuck wondering why you can’t get your business to perform as well as you hoped.
After all of that, I suggest looking at the people you have in your life, the ones you spend the most time with. Are they mostly positive, or are they dragging you down?
Then decide to spend more time with the positive people who can pull you up, and distance yourself from the negative ones that keep pulling you down.
Once you decide what that means for you, and the relationships in your life – make a commitment to your friends and family to not be the negative person in their lives that pulls them down, but be the positive person who is there to pull them up.
Have a wonderful day, spending quality positive time with your family!
