The people with whom you have the most contact and hang around with will have either a positive or negative effect on your levels of self-esteem and confidence.
We all know those people who are positive, happy and joyful to be around.
How do they make you feel?
Yes, they make me feel the same way too! The positive thinking people can put zest into a boring atmosphere and can fill the room with 'can do' vibes and this has a knock on effect onto everyone else. They are a joy to be around and bring our energy levels up and increase our self confidence.
We also know of those people who drain the energy from a room just by walking in!
It is their perception that they never had the opportunities, they are always putting people down, they don't like others to be successful, they are jealous of everything and everyone and are negative thinkers - need I go on?
These people have the power to drain your energy and bring you down to their level, a million miles away from the level that YOU want to be operating on. But, and here is the interesting thing, they only have that power if you allow them to.
Some family members can be a lot like this as well, we can always choose our friends, we can never choose our relatives! We can choose what we are prepared to listen to though.
So what can you do to make sure that the people who you hang around with empower and support what you stand for, rather than bring you down all of the time?
1.You have the power to choose who you hang around with. Ideally you want happy, vibrant and positive people around you. When you hang around with those types of people, you will notice that the negative ones will disappear as they won't be able to cope.
2. If you have good friends who are negative and yet you still want to hang around them, make a point of letting them know how it feels when they are being negative - if they are a true friend they will respect you for this. If they are negative from time to time just acknowledge that this is what they are like and block out their negativity.
3.The same can be said with your family. Your more mature family members have behaviours that have been conditioned for years and years and from different eras. They have learned their behaviours from their parents and grandparents. Appreciate where they have come from and, as in number 2 above, acknowledge that this is what they are like and block out the negativity. They probably won't change now, but you can adapt your thinking so that it doesn't have a detrimental effect on you.
4.Remember, that nothing has meaning in your life except the meaning that you give it.
You are in control of your positivity and negativity, and nobody can take that away from you if you don't allow them to.