This post is Day 22 of the 31 Days to Reset Your Life Challenge. Learn more and sign up for the program here.
You may have heard this enlightening statement at some point in your life:
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn
Do you agree? I do. The people you allow into your life can have a profound influence on your thoughts and actions. As a result, if you’re surrounded by negative people most of the time, your progress in life can be hindered.
In my own life, I made a personal commitment to myself this year to get rid of all the things that did not make me happy, which involved a massive Facebook unfriending and distancing myself from some toxic people in my life. And let me tell you…I never realized how toxic negative people can be until I changed my own worldview. Over the past few years, I’ve come to understand this fundamental principle from spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson:
“Love in your mind produces love in your life. Fear in your mind produces fear in your life.”
In other words, what goes in is what comes out. What that means for me is that I try to surround myself with loving people in order to produce more love in my mind, and therefore more love in my life. When I hang around people that constantly live their lives in fear, it literally drags me down into the dumps with them as well. Whether it’s negative food or negative energy or negative people, it ALL affects your body, your soul and your mind. So today, you’re going to purge the negativity from your life.
Day 22: Purge Negative People from Your Life
Make a list of all the people in your life who bring you down. These are the people you know or hang out with who are major Debbie Downers, who complain all the time and have nothing but bad things to say about other people. They are the cynics and the snarks who have nothing better to do than talk about how much everything sucks – people, work, life in general. This list might include all the folks you ignore when they call, text or email you because, well, just the thought of interacting with them is depressing. Get my drift?
- Friends
- Family members
- Current or ex-romantic partners
- Co-workers or colleagues
- Old high school or college buddies
- Facebook friends
- Twitter followers
Do what you have to do to remove these folks from your life (or at least limit your exposure to them), whether that means not sitting next to them at lunch in the company cafeteria, declining their invitations to hang out or unfriending them on social networks.
The Elephant in the Room: It is not lost on me that the negative person you need to purge from your life might be YOU. If you are your own personal Debbie Downer, here is a special modification for this exercise.
- Take your notebook around with you today and make a list of all the instances where you express negativity or cynicism throughout the day – either with your thoughts, words or actions.
- For each instance, explain why you said, thought or did what you did. Be honest. Were you jealous? Feeling depressed? Angry or annoyed?
- For each instance, brainstorm what you could have said, thought or done instead. Could you have looked at the glass half-full? Saw the situation from the other person’s point of view? Showed compassion instead of cattiness?
When you’re done, please share your experience with us in the comments! Was it difficult to let go of certain people (or the negative version of yourself), either in your mind or literally? Who did you let go of? How did you do it?
Note: If you blogged about today’s assignment, please post the link in the comments so we can read it!
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Reminds me of a devil with sucker bites.
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I have 3 main negative people in my life – my mother, my middle sister and ME.
Through the process of learning, growing and changing, I have obviously brought up alot of issues from childhood for myself. Some of it is still ongoing.
I am in the process of trying to “purge” myself and I am doing well. But I still live in a toxic environment, and this is a living situation that is not going to change any time soon.
I don’t have any “loving” people to surround myself with, so I have nothing acting as a balance.
I am literally only just learning to trust people enough to let them in.
I started writing this late in the day, so I am not going to write down every negative thought/feeling. Any that I have are to do with finding the roots of my problem. And when I find them, I am digging them up, planting new seeds and growing. So as such, they are not “negative” negative thoughts – just me identifying the roots of certain issues.
I had already purged negative people from most of my interactions (i.e. I never contact any “ex” romantic partner or negative persons from my former workplace, and I seldom interact with negative extended family members). However, some of the persons with whom I interact online are very negative. I have been trying to spread positive vibes, but in some instances their negativity causes me to feel worried, fearful, or depressed about whatever the negative topic is that the person has brought forth. While I do wish to feel that I am an informed person and one who cares about others’ problems, on the other hand taking in too much “doom and gloom” is not healthy for one’s emotional state and can sidetrack a person from focusing on things that are important to one’s own welfare. “Unfriending” someone on Facebook is not easy. A few weeks ago I quietly unfriended a negative person, and the person became very upset and sent me a message, which was polite but sad, stating that he had never done anything “to” me or insulted me and that it was unfair of me to “unfriend” him; so I renewed the “friend” status. There are several negative persons in my “friend” circle on Facebook; and since I never want to hurt anyone’s feelings, I have decided to not “unfriend” them but to not respond to any of their negative posts. This is probably not the best solution for ME, but if being in my online circle is helpful to them when they read my positive posts, they can remain on my “friends” list, as long as none of their negativity is directed to hurt me intentionally.
How did everyone else fair out, any similar comments….?
Ok, so, thus far although I have found some of the exercises challenging, I have been able to complete them. However, Day 22nd’s Challenge is a lot more difficult than I could imagine.
I purged FB and lost numbers that were not needed. But one of the most negative people in my life is my mother-in-law. For the last three years, I have tried to instil positive behaviours and some have been taken, but there are times, where it feels like we take one step forward, four steps backwards. I am currently dealing with a family member being ill and I am putting a lot of effort into my family relationships and I am finding draining to be understanding and compassionate with my mother-in-law and lately, I have found it difficult to converse with her…..But I really can’t purge this relationship.
She is negative, she nags, she does not listen to anyone, just talks on and I feel frustrated being near her…….I am loosing patience. We have been planning our wedding and there is a larger need to interact and its hard.
Anyone dealing with something similar?
Yes. In theory, it would be ideal if we all could surround ourselves with only positive persons; however, the reality is that we have certain family obligations, whether the persons are positive or negative. I have found that when dealing with negative persons in my extended family, the less said the better the outcome. I have learned to be a “listener” and offer sympathy when it is appropriate to do so, but it is not healthy emotionally to “own” anyone else’s problems nor to subscribe to their negative opinions. Listening shows respect (especially to elders in the family), but I realized that I cannot change anyone’s attitude. So if I disagree I usually keep my thoughts to myself.
‘Love in your mind produces love in your life. Fear in your life produces fear in your life.’ Sometime you read something and have a lightbulb moment.
I thought that I had purged the negativity in my life with friends,partners, old school buddies. Then after looking at this task I realised that I need to purge family. I sat and gave myself the same advice that I give my friends, if I was not related to them would they be in my circle of friends? would I choose to have them in my life? The answer was an outstanding NO!
So far I have totally I have gotten most of the negative ones out of my circle the journey continues.
The Elephant in the room was me and the way I saw myself through others eyes; now after purging neg family and their views. I feel a lot lighter and more postive about me
it took me 10 days to get past this hump: http://www.amandamichellejones.com/?p=761
I actually started doing this around June when I moved to Chicago. I let go of the people that just weren’t positive influences in my life and closed the doors to a lot of negative relationships I was trying to hold on to. I’ve been very happy with not only my decision but also more so with myself because it has also helped me see what kind of people I wish to surround myself with in the future.
I will start on purging my Facebook friends tomorrow as I am not logging on to Facebook today
I’ve been working for months at deleting people from various social networks (Facebook and Twitter) that are not at all adding to my life. Not that they are necessarily negative, but that they simply are keeping me from focusing on the people that mean something to me. In terms of negative people, I actually had a conversation with an ex earlier last week about this very thing. When I saw the post on Happy Black Woman, I called this person and really laid it down that we will either 1) make some drastic changes in our relationship, as it has become super unhealthy or 2) just stop dealing with each other on all levels. He felt some type of way and we ended the conversation prematurely, so some time this week, we will certainly finish it.
For more, read: http://keikokaveri.tumblr.com/post/2478172423
This is something that I’ve been doing all year. Some people I purposefully released, others situations and circumstances allowed me to see there true colors and that was the catalyst for me walking away and letting go of people (whether it be one person or a group).
I’m not going to list names, groups, activities or orgs that I’ve purged myself from but there are a good number of people that I just simply had to let go. I’ve started on the social media purge deleting people, I’ve also deleted people from my phone, instant messenger and other ways I could fall back into contacting them. It kind of feels like a weight has been lifted to release some of the people and things that haven’t brought happiness to my life.
with you on purging my instant messenger list…on my way to do that now!
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I feel pretty lucky in that I’ve eliminated a lot of the people in my life that are negative or who bring me down. After a while, I just decided that I only wanted to hang out with people that brought good into my life and anyone that wasn’t doing that I would keep out. I still have to deal with people who irk me (mostly because they’re friends of friends), but in general, I keep my interactions with them to a minimum and it works out for everyone.
The one person I feel like I really need to purge is a guy I used to date. I don’t think that he’s necessarily a negative person, but he inspires a lot of negative feelings in me. He’s constantly IMming or emailing me, even though we both have new people in our lives. I think he wants to be friends, but I just can’t go there with him. I know this, but yet I continue to let him in and chat with him when he sends me messages. I really need to start cutting him off, if only for my own sanity.
Hi Tara,
I get you when you say that there are still those who irk you through friends of friends. Have you purged the guy that you used to date?
Fortunately I don’t have a lot of negativity in my life. But I do have a past lover I’ve been holding on to. I have let him go but allowed him to keep coming back. But he violated me in the worse way and I can’t come back from that. Its gonna be hard but I officially need to let him go for good.
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Like some of the ladies I started getting rid of the negative nelly’s in my live about 2 years ago. Thought I was done, but there’s one more person that has to go. As for the elephant in the room, I did do some self examination today and I realized that my job is TOXIC! Everything about that place puts me in a negative mood. Not good, I know.
I forgot to tell you guys that I worked on updating my resume last night and tonight I’m looking into finding out more information about the photography classes I want to take.
What if the most toxic person in your life is an ill, elderly parent who is entirely without any support (because he or she drove everyone else away) other than you?
I feel as though this is one of the hardest things to deal with. I totally understand where you are coming from. Completely, because we are facing a similar situation in my family at the moment, and there is no way you can just walk away from a parent who is emotionally and physically fragile. The only solution I can offer and one that we apply in our family is to constantly assert that meanness/negativity/selfishness/manipulation etc are simply not acceptable. Sometimes it causes an argument, but when you face your parent and have an honest conversation about how you truly feel about how they treat you something opens up in them; and maybe for that day things might be better. Or worse. But you have to keep the conversation going. Do not allow it to fester. Because eventually it might get too heavy for you to bear; I suggest talking it out. Scary, and may appear pointless but it works. Sometimes the elderly, ill parent is not wanting to be toxic but is afraid because they have to face their own mortality which is a lonely experience. Conversation allows them to name their fears. And you can be there to offer support and assurance.
I also suggest, running throug the Reset exercises with them, I’m doing that with a family member who is ill and often a roller coaster of emotions, it has definitely helped her and I am helping her focus and accomplish her goals and focus on some of the 100 things that make her happy (some are just simple everyday things, that help her negative ffelings).
Good luck and Patience is a beautiful virtue!
I’ve actually done this already!
I came to my breaking point about 6 months ago and just decided to let people go, I had to end up moving on from mybest friend of almost 10 years, another close friends, a few random people, distance myslef from my aunt and grandmother and do a big FB unfriend as well…it was the hardest and best thing i’ve ever done and looking back i dont regret it at all, it gave me such peace you have no idea. I’m smiling just thinking about it.
Now as far as my grandmother and aunt, because they are family, I will try to salvage some type of relationship out of that, even if it’s just sending cards on holidays or birthdays, its a tricky situation because the issue isnt even with me, its with my mother and them so i had to remove myself from all of that, but i digress, nothing is going to be done until i finish working on myself though and learn how to handle that in a way that wont drag me in but also wont feel like ive given up on the situation.
What if these negative people are related to you..like immediate family members
I struggle with this since I can’t just drop my family but the few times I’ve tried to confront them about the negativity the conversations just don’t go well at all.
I used to catch myself thinking/saying really mean things about people but I always remind myself what I felt like getting made fun of…I would never wish that feeling on anyone else. No bueno.
get rid of them even if they are family. Just because you share genes doesnt mean you need to tied down. Environment and thinking can mutate genes and you dont belong to the zoo clan anymore. you don’t owe it to anyone other than God
This is a good one. Lucky for me, I don’t have these people in my life…don’t get me wrong, I know some of these folks but they don’t get to be on the permanent rotation of people I talk to, visit, or hang out with.
But, I think I’ll do a modification of the self-exercise. I’ve actually been thinking about it and halfway doing it for a few weeks now. I realize that me and my friends are very critical of other people at times (as I know a lot of women are) and lately I’ve been mentally popping myself on the wrist every time I say something that’s not nice about a person that walks by. Me taking note of everytime I do it, makes me realize that I do it more than I thought. And I try to replace the negative thing I was thinking with the phrase “act in love” and then something positive (this is me trying to “act in love” as I said in my personal mission statement).
For example…a chic walks by with an outfit on that is CLEARLY too small for her. What I think is “Where the hell is she going in that”, I catch myself saying this not-so-nice thing and then say to myself “Act in Love…she has really pretty eyes”…and keep it moving, lol.
I am guilty of doing the same thing. The other day I at this girl’s boots and said to myself damn her boots are so ran over. I felt so bad after I caught myself. I had to ask God to forgive me for being so mean. It didn’t occur to me that maybe she can’t afford new boots while I’m standing there holding two bags from Nordstrom. I felt like a real jerk. I said that I was going to stop being so snarky.
What you said about maybe she can’t afford new boots, that’s a really good point. I agree, being snarky kind of sucks especially when you do it so easily that it comes out before you even realize you’re doing it. I will say I don’t say this stuff out loud to people, I would never hurt someone’s feelings like that…but it bothers me that I think these things so frequently.