Surrounding yourself with the RIGHT people.

Positive people only.

So, here I am again. It’s been another week or so, and I’ve found myself really concentrating on my own wellbeing. I’ve realised that my happiness and my content is way more important than the people around me.

This revelation, however, hasn’t come too easily.

Foolish me, how could I do this again?

For a long time, before my first relationship, I had a lot of walls up. I was very closed off to the world, I kept myself very private (to be honest, I still do to most people) and I kept people at an arms length. Keeping people far away from me was my idea of seeing who I really wanted in my life. It was also a little defence mechanism I created to stop myself being hurt.

Unfortunately, I had been hurt, and that’s a story for a different time, which led to me shutting off any emotions I had. It was fairly difficult time for me, but it kept life really simple. I didn’t have to care for anyone, I didn’t have to worry, I didn’t have to deal with any sort of feelings for anyone. To teenage me, it was a fairly great way to live my life.

No feelings = no worries, no heartbreak, no difficulty.

Easy life.

Though, over the next couple of years, I sort of let those walls fall down. I watched a woman emerge who wanted to be loved; she wanted to feel everything. To me, coming to grasp with having actual feelings, that I let myself feel, it was great but hard at the same time. I had to balance all these feelings, I had to deal with horrible people who said horrible things… and it tore me apart.

Now, stay with me, because this tale of mine does have an ending.

At the moment, I consider myself a quite social person. I will go to a blog event now and then, I’ll socialise with friends and I make time to meet up with those who are important to me. However, I’ve started to take the approach of caring about people (oh dear, can’t I just eliminate that part of me?)… naturally, as humans, we seem to care about those who around us who we take a liking to.

Though, sometimes, those people are really not what we need in life. We would like them to be good people, we would like them to do well in life… we want to see them succeed. Not everyone can be a good influence in your life.

This is where you, and I, start to think about who we are surrounding ourselves with. Your ‘squad’, ‘tribe’, ‘group’, ‘besties’… friends are very important in your life. They are the people who bring you up when you’re down. They tell you what you need to hear. They make your life better.

You find that ‘good’ friends, normally, want you to become the best person you can be. They want you to succeed. They don’t want to drag you down. I mean, what is the point of wasting your time on someone who never encourages you?

Here’s your answer…

There is NO point.

Everyone is guilty of staying friends with the bad influence; that girl who always told you to skip lessons, or the guy who told you that you were ugly (because we all know that a boy who is mean to you is really keen… ugh, give me a bag to VOM in), perhaps the ‘friend’ who told you that you were a wimp, or boring because you didn’t want to try drugs.

Though, it’s time we all stopped doing this. Granted, I am so guilty of staying ‘friends’ with people because I thought they would change… and guess what? They never f*cking do. They will always stay the same, but your life needs to be shaped into some good. Something better than they will ever imagine for you. These people are NO good.

Here I wind back to my long tale of woe, I spent a lot of time shutting off my feelings because I thought it would stop dumb people coming into my life. It was a really crap idea on my behalf- we’ll always care for people but that involves letting go of that poison in our life. Don’t stop yourself living because of someone in your life who is an asshole. Chuck them in the trash and don’t look back.