With the holiday season now in full swing, it’s a good time to take inventory of our blessings. It seems in our society that we often pay far more attention to what we don’t’ have. I believe to be a balanced individual one needs to have the ability to objectively analyze her or his life with as little prejudice as possible. It’s not an easy task to accomplish but one worth undertaking if he or she seeks to lead a life of success and happiness.
Speaking of happiness, much of recent research seems to indicate that our social networks are the biggest determination on whether we’ll be happy or not. This means most empirical data states that people who have close intimate relationships are happier than those who don’t. Strong relationships outrank money, real estate and other material factors that many people associate with happiness.
Knowing this fact it becomes important that we surround ourselves with healthy family and friends. For recent research also supports an old saying, “birds of the same feather, flock together.” If the individuals we spend time around are negative, unhappy and corrosive there’s a very good chance that we will become those characteristics as well.
This is a very difficult issue for most people to confront. We don’t have a choice about the family we’ll be born into. As children, our family of origin (parents) have a big impact on are beliefs and values. Our family of origin also impacts proximity to the institutions where we develop other relationships (neighborhood, school, church, etc). The tendency to stay loyal to what you know is something our society and media seem to reinforce. Even when we know something may be amiss in our relationships we sometimes hang in there much longer than we should. There is one thing we all must take ownership of as adults, we do have control on who we allow in our lives.
We must be honest with ourselves regarding current relationships. The relationships we have with family and friends that are having life damaging consequences need to be addressed. Either by creating boundaries that gives you the respect you deserve or outright discontinuing the relationship altogether.
What are life-damaging consequences? To be honest, it’s a subjective thing. What I may consider a life-damaging consequence may only be an idiosyncrasy to you. Although, the answers to the following questions will be good way to begin to identify what life damaging consequence are to you.
Are you returning from outings with your friend feeling humiliated?
Is your friend the type of a person that you sometimes ask yourself why you’re friends with her or him in the first place?
Do you think to yourself that your friend’s negative qualities are starting to outweigh the positive ones?
Do you feel more alone in the world after spending time with him or her?
Many people may feel trepidation about possibly holding their family and/or friends accountable for there behavior. Issues with family/friends can be complex and just plain messy. It can cause drama that many people would just like to avoid all together. It’s completely understandable to have that viewpoint.
It might help to look at the situation another way. It’s called having compassion for yourself. It means loving yourself enough to honor how your feeling and addressing the issue, no matter what the consequences may be (take your personal safety into account). Like I previously stated, whom we spend our time with can have a significant impact on our behavior. What do you think the impact would be on your behavior if you were consistently partaking in relationships where you’re not being respected?
In the end life is too short to ignore how we feel. People who truly care about you should be trying build you up, not you tear down. Healthy relationships should challenge us to be better people, not dumb us down to the point where we can’t grow and be ourselves. There are enough people in your everyday life that you will have difficulty with, so why include more people in your personal life that make existing more difficult? Love yourself enough to really give thought about the answers to the questions posed in this article.
Posted By: DAVID JOHNSON
Wednesday, December 5th 2012 at 3:01PM
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