How To Choose The Right Friends-Quality Friendships
Show Me Your Friends
And I’ll tell you what you are!
My great grandmother used to have a saying that was “show me your friends and I’ll tell you what you are”.
This is a true statement in most cases, so it is important that you choose your surroundings wisely. Most people make their friends in school or in the workplace, friendships usually form very naturally and that is a beautiful thing! However if the people you are choosing to be around are pieces of shit, you will not improve any part of yourself.
There are tons of examples of this and these friendships can lead you in many directions but here is a simplified version. When I was young, my friends started smoking and drinking at a young age. In those uncertain early years I thought shit, I should smoke too. This led to a negative chain affect in my adulthood. I had a friend I used to play a competitive sport, he did not smoke or drink. He went on to play his sport professionally and got a full scholarship. I went on to party all of my money away, going downhill health wise to the point that I was often out of breath playing any sport. Getting into many fights because I was drunk, that resulted in lifelong injuries etc etc.
Obviously this was not my friends faults but it stemmed from bad decision influenced by them.
Many of those same friends I had at the time went on to become alcoholics, drug addicts, ad had various terminal health problems.
Meanwhile in paradise there were other groups in school that were lifting weights, paying attention in school, living clean. Most of them later in life went on to have homes and careers at a younger age. I am not saying there is a right or wrong way to live only that if you surround yourself with shit you will be living in a hot steamy pile of shit.
At work, I was in sales. I tried to surround myself with the top sales agents. They were not perfect but they did what they did well and had the pay checks to prove it. I wanted those pay checks so I mimicked some of the behaviours these people had to be successful. It worked! However on the other side of the office there was the negative group that constantly complained. This group of people were the black cloud, they were the ones that had the shitty pay checks, they were the ones that were fired and this caused their co-partners to complained even more.
NEGATIVITY BREEDS NEGATIVITY. POSITIVITY BREEDS POSITIVITY.
If you are surrounded by bad things and people, they will somehow bring their shit into your life or vice versa. You need to start sifting through the people you want to be around, or choose when you want to be around certain people. I believe firmly in loyalty in friendship so I am not saying just dump your shitty friend (that would make you an asshole). You can choose when to be around them. One of my closest friends Juner is a party animal, he loves to drink, smoke and do cocaine! When we go out together, we get drunk together then he indulges in his party drug. It is like an explosion we end up by the end of the night fighting each other or fighting someone else! When sober, he is an amazing friend that would bend over backwards for me and my family. As we got older our visions of ourselves changed. We took a break from each other and by doing this it gave him and me the time to reflect on what was wrong. His self image changed into him taking on new hobbies Yoga and painting and I also took on new hobbies due to my self talk. I took up martial arts, and writing. After our “break” we decided that when we hang out together we need to do things that do not include drinking and partying. The result is I keep a good loyal friend and we do yoga together once a week.
One of my best friends when I was growing up was a great person that surrounded himself with shitty people. His friends all sold drugs and were very violent. Being around these people all the time put him in a rut that created a bad self image of himself within him. He started to think of himself exactly like them. I knew him very differently. He started to become violent, started selling drugs and more. I literally watched him transform before me…We started to lose touch, but reconnected years later when he had a child. He realized then that he was fucking up and that the image he painted for himself was not really him. He began to improve, his friends did not. One night him and his buddies went out to a local nightclub, there was a fight….his friend was fighting another person. He tried to break it up and his friend accidentally shot him killing him dead. This is an extreme reality of what the wrong friends can bring you. He left behind a wife and child all because he chose to surround himself with bad people.
Being around the right kind of people can enrich your life, and we have the choice to choose the circumstances we want to be with people. This is great because people are not always their best. I try to be with my friends when we are doing something together they are good at, as it helps me grow and become better. For example, I want to have coffee or a drink with a person that is a good conversationalist, Or I want to go to the gym with someone that goes regularly, I want to go shopping with someone that is well dressed, I want to work with productive successful people, I choose to travel with fun well travelled people that I do not have to babysit, When I dated I would date people I was attracted to physically and could carry a good conversation with me. This is how choosy you are allowed to be!!
If you surround yourself with people that complain all the time you WILL join the conversation, It is difficult not to. If you are around people on drugs, you may be enticed to do it with them or; high they might do something to you. If you surround yourself with violent people they may lash out at you or someone else while you are around resulting in a charge or injury.
This concept is also the same in family situations. People tend to adopt the habits good and bad of their surroundings. Many men that watched their mothers get beat as children will grow up to beat their wives resulting in a chain affect that can go down generations. I was in a limo bus years ago coming back from a wedding with a young man and his wife and his entire family. There was 20 people on this bus and he began abusing his wife in front of everyone. He slapped her, yelled at her, grabbed her hair etc you get the jist… I told him to “stop now” although i did not know him that well. He swore at me and continued his belligerent behaviour. I took off my shoes and smacked him right in his face with it. He was a little bitch, he stopped. Although I did not deal with this in the most appropriate way this helped this dickhead and his wife realize that this is not normal healthy behaviour. Hopefully helping them break the chain of their own children seeing this in the future.
Surrounding yourself with the right people can affect all aspects of your life, many find their significant others because of the crowds they are in. If they are in a bad crowd their significant other will likely also be a bad person. My cousin that is hospitalized due to a drug overdose found her significant other in the drug world. Since then she has been beat, and even sued by this person. But this has become her norm because of the people she is around. My sister in law that was cheated on lives in her situation because this is the norm for the people she surrounds herself with as many of the family members in her husbands family cheat on their wives.
Is there someone that you know that you know is going to do well in life? Write their names down here.___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.
Why do you think they will do well?_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
What do you think they are doing differently than you?______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.
What kind of people does this person have for friends?______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.
Do any of your friends have any of these traits?_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
What steps can you take to surround yourself with some people that have these positive characteristics?_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The characteristics that you wrote down are how you envision yourself in the future. You need to start the implementation process and make this you.
Your friends can help carve out a new you, you need to stop acting like a little bitch and take control of your surroundings in order to be the best you, making mature precise decision is important here.
What do you expect out of your friends?____________________________________________________________________________________
Have you ever asked yourself this question? If you have not; the time to do this is now, do not wait for nothing to happen lol. FriendS and family are important for many parts of a persons life, some will be there for emotional support, others will make light of things and help you realize your problem is no big deal, others will try to fix things. Friends are an important support structure. If you have someone in your life right now that brings absolutely nothing to the table that you need or want in your life GET RID OF THEM NOW! People like this will waste your time and often suck energy out of you. What is the point in friendship?______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.
Your answer defines your expectation, part of not being a bitch in life is realizing that your expectations have to be your minimum standard. Please re-read this chapter it is short and sweet, but it can help make a significant impact in your life.
A friend of mine was born at the same hospital as me at the same time, we literally grew up together. We had been friends our entire lives but he offered nothing but negativity to every situation we were in together. He even hit on my wife!! (little bitch lol). I made the decision to stop talking to this person as I could not tolerate his shitty behaviour anymore. I thought it was going to be really hard, but this person really added nothing to the friendship, not even good conversation. He brought his problems with him and that filled space in my mind and heart. The result of getting rid of this idiot was awesome, I was happier because I didn’t have to deal with his shit and I had more room to give to people that I cared about. I don’t hate this person, and I hope they become better in their own life but I don’t need them to become better myself.
Your friends will help dictate your circle of influence, if the space is filled with negativity your overall outcome will be by no question negative. All of us should regularly make sure we are bringing in positive people into our lives so that our inner talk can reflect positivity. You body and your mind are both listening, and will respond with long term reactions either good or bad on your body. Your mind will create neural branches that grow as you expand your thought on a specific thing. For example if your thoughts are on something negative, like how much you cannot stand a specific person you can expend a lot of energy on this and expand on the thought of why you hate this person. Expanding the thought goes like this…..I can’t stand this person…… then your mind will say I can’t stand this person because of how they talk….then I can’t stand this person because when they talk they gossip too much… If you allow yourself to continue on this cycle of thinking it can take control of your mind space and leave you with no room to grow positively. Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to remove this person from your circle and not give a shit about them?
