Speaker 1: I'm Sam Wood, and this is your motivational moment for
Speaker 1: this week, and we are going to be removing negative
Speaker 1: people from your life. Now. I know that sounds harsh,
Speaker 1: but I'm also confident and comfortable saying that. I better.
Speaker 1: Soon as I said that, your mind went to a
Speaker 1: certain group of people or particular person that you know
Speaker 1: isn't good for you. They're a bad influence, they have
Speaker 1: very different values. They drag you down. You don't feel
Speaker 1: good about yourself after spending time with this person. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the terms that I use is they're an
Speaker 1: energy vampire. You know, they sort of suck your energy
Speaker 1: or I don't know. You feel like their relationship with
Speaker 1: you is transactional to them. Don't actually care about your
Speaker 1: well being or you doing well. It's more about what
Speaker 1: they get out of the relationship rather than being a
Speaker 1: two way street. There's a myriad of different ways in
Speaker 1: which people are not good for us. But I think
Speaker 1: we need to start by acknowledging, and you may have
Speaker 1: heard this before, we are the average of the five
Speaker 1: people we spend the most time with. So I think
Speaker 1: if any of those things that I mentioned before, you
Speaker 1: are nodding along, going Yep, I absolutely have that person
Speaker 1: or that type of person in my life. And then
Speaker 1: you're also saying, oh, yeah, that person would actually be
Speaker 1: in one of the people I spend the most time with,
Speaker 1: they would be in that top five. Then it makes
Speaker 1: complete sense that they are going to be doing you
Speaker 1: damage in some way, whether you feel that they're holding
Speaker 1: you back from happiness or achieving what you want to achieve,
Speaker 1: or they're emotionally draining on you, or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: So I'm not saying we only look at the five
Speaker 1: perop we spend the most time with, but I think
Speaker 1: that's a really important place to start. Then we look
Speaker 1: outside of perhaps the more obvious ones, and there might
Speaker 1: be people that until now you haven't even realized they're
Speaker 1: having this negative effect on you. The easiest way is
Speaker 1: to actually observe how you feel before you catch up
Speaker 1: with someone, and then again how you feel after we
Speaker 1: catch up with someone. Which sounds very simple, but how
Speaker 1: often do we actually do this? Why if you are
Speaker 1: feeling like I don't want to spend time with this person,
Speaker 1: or you get anxious about it, or you're not looking
Speaker 1: forward to it, or you know it's going to put
Speaker 1: you in a bad mood or drain you or frustrate you,
Speaker 1: or there's going to be anxiety or anger or arguments.
Speaker 1: Do you continue to see these people? Or why are
Speaker 1: we not recognizing the emotions that they're creating or the
Speaker 1: behaviors that they're creating and doing anything about it. So
Speaker 1: I think that's a really important place to start. Now.
Speaker 1: I said at the beginning, this sounds harsh, because sometimes
Speaker 1: the people that are impacting us negatively we are very
Speaker 1: close to. They might be a partner, a very close friend,
Speaker 1: and to sort of say cut these people out of
Speaker 1: your life can sound drastic. And I'm not suggesting that
Speaker 1: that is the only way to deal with these things.
Speaker 1: But reducing the time you are spending with these people,
Speaker 1: or changing the relationship you have with these people by
Speaker 1: having some really hard, honest conversations has to happen. And
Speaker 1: I know that this isn't an easy thing to do.
Speaker 1: In fact, I'm not even suggesting you do anything ration
Speaker 1: rush out and make wholesale changes tomorrow. You're going to
Speaker 1: observe behavior over a month to really identify how and
Speaker 1: who are impacting you. But I think it's really important
Speaker 1: that you acknowledge that it's happening, and then it's really
Speaker 1: important that you accept that it's going to be hard. Now,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite sayings is hard choices, easy life,
Speaker 1: easy choices, hard life. I'll say that again, hard choices,
Speaker 1: easy life, easy choices, hard life. Often do we avoid
Speaker 1: the tough conversations, the confrontation, the uncomfortableness, the awkwardness, and
Speaker 1: things just get worse. You're just not prepared to have
Speaker 1: that tough situation, and therefore you have months, sometimes years,
Speaker 1: sometimes decades of pain that could have been avoided if
Speaker 1: you were prepared to have that hard situation or face
Speaker 1: that hard situation. So before you start just chopping people
Speaker 1: out of your life, have those hard conversations. Life is short,
Speaker 1: we don't have much free time. We need to value
Speaker 1: our happiness more highly and protect it more strongly, and
Speaker 1: to reduce the time that we spend with certain people
Speaker 1: or cut that time out all together is a really
Speaker 1: really powerful way sometimes of taking back control of our
Speaker 1: own happiness and our own strength. So this is not
Speaker 1: one of those listener tasks that is black and white.
Speaker 1: You have to spend I believe probably a month evaluating,
Speaker 1: and then you need to identify who in your life
Speaker 1: brings that to you in spades, and who in your
Speaker 1: life perhaps creates the opposite, and you need to do
Speaker 1: something about it. And it's really really, really hard, but
Speaker 1: I promise you this your first reaction, I swear to
Speaker 1: you will be God. That was hard. God, that was uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: But I wish I did this a long Tomica sh