via Daily Prompt: Record
You’re excited, you thought about this, you planned it so well and you know that you are even going to get the finance to support your idea. You just want to present it to your team for peace of mind before making the application for finance and so you set up a time to meet with them. Your bubble burst after meeting with them. All that hype and zest disappeared by the sighs in their voices and questioning eyes. You suddenly don’t feel as excited and as motivated as you did.

You buy this new shirt and you want to wear it for work for the first time and so you do. You go to work and walk in, getting a compliment, someone telling you how lovely the shirt is. You feel good. You get a few other compliments throughout the day and you think that you made a great choice in buying that shirt. You decide to stop at your friend’s place after work. She immediately notices you have a new shirt and says you should have got a size bigger so that it could set properly on you; right now it’s a bit too tight. She also says that it’s not worth the price you paid; you could have got it cheaper somewhere else. Being your friend, you value her opinion and you are suddenly not so excited about this shirt anymore and actually will think twice about wearing it again, unless you lose some weight perhaps.

You want to study but your partner wants to drink. He or she tells you oh don’t worry, you can always study tomorrow and so you feel bad and you leave your books aside and decide to have some drinks too. Next day when you want to study, your partner wants to go and visit friends and so you decide to go as well because you don’t want him drinking and driving. Your studies can wait and it does.

Have you noticed how you are perceived by the company you keep? If you are surrounded by colleagues, friends, partners, etc. that are negative or have a bad reputation, you too are in most cases judged in the same catergory. It’s not fair, but it is a reality. You don’t have to live up to other’s expectations to be judged correctly, what’s important is that you live by your morals with integrity. Feeling that within yourself is far more important to try to change what others think of you and their perceptions of you.

Besides being judged as the type of company you keep, many actually do become like the company they keep. If you surround yourself with positive people, you too become positive. If you surround yourself with people who are always negative, you too will speak negatively, think negatively and perform negatively. The company you keep is therefore very important because it can shape you or break you. If you don’t support the ideas or ways of life of someone, participating or being involved with them in any could potentially compromise your values and beliefs. Supporting unrighteous behavior is a way of encouraging the other person to continue with such behavior, whereas resistance implies that you have firm beliefs which cannot be compromised.

E.g. if your brother is stealing and needs a lift from the place of theft, you don’t allow yourself to give him that lift because you simply do not believe in stealing. Even though you may convince yourself that you are actually not stealing, the fact that he is with you, if you are driving him there, is actually saying that you are condoning his act of theft. As a loving sister, you should direct him to the path of righteousness, not lead him into more temptation, because that’s just what a loving sister or any sister should do.

In the first 3 paragraphs, I tried to depict how people have influence in your life, your thoughts, your dreams, your goals and your desires. This is unfortunately a reality. There are people who will help us to the top where we should be and want to be and then there are people who will drag you right to the bottom with them. It’s not always done intentionally. Negative people have very little self worth if any. They sadly find power within by dampening your spirits. If they can’t do something, they don’t want you to either and so they say or do everything, to make you lose faith in yourself or your idea. Very often these are people you are close to and because you feel close to them, you don’t see that is happening. You need to step aside and look at the people in your life.

Make a list. Record your thoughts. Ask yourself, what has this person contributed in my life?

Will I lose a lot if this person had to leave?

When you are surrounded by negativity, you too become negative. You get drained of every single positive thought because you are surrounded by negativity. So you need to get rid of any negativity in your life, in order to move forward. So if there is someone in your life that is draining you and robbing you of your beliefs, they are going to be there as long as you allow them to be.

Have you noticed successful people are mostly surrounded by successful people? Have you noticed the type of lives they lead?

Now look at the negative people. Look at what they are surrounded by. Look at their moral and value system. Look to see if they have any credible achievements?

Now ask yourself, who do I need and want in my life? And if your answer is someone positive, then it means I already have one positive reader and that’s a start!

If you have the power within to spread your positive spirit, then do just that, because there may be one negative person that needs it.