Dustin Wood once said that “Your perceptions of others reveal so much about your own personality,”.
In fact, when you ask someone to rate the personality of a friend or acquaintance, you may learn as much about the rater providing the personality description as the person they are describing.
Now you may ask me why I am sharing this and why I am bringing this up.
In the past, I learned a hard lesson about friendships, especially after moving to Cape Town.
I found myself at a point not having a social standing, but also associating myself with the wrong type of people.
People that did not reflect my good moral values, people that were not likeminded.
I did not want that for my life or the legacy I want to leave behind, but it was also a lesson I had to learn, so I could grow.
I even found myself in a situation where someone would tell me not to associate myself with certain people, in fact, at a point even tell me to stay far away from them, yet they end up being friends with them, something I never really understood.
But I came to realize that sometimes people put other people down in the hope to elevate themselves.
A lesson I have learned recently was that if you’re not careful, toxic people can negatively influence the way you think, feel, and behave. They can introduce unnecessary stress into your life and cause chaos that will drag you down.
Recently I have shared with so many people that for most of our lives, the people that we meet are defined by our social context at the time and that you’ll have and see many friendships come and go and that’s OK; not everyone is meant to be seated at your table and play leading characters in your life.
We can indeed tell a fair bit about a person, especially by the company (s)he keeps, but also, less directly, by the company (s)he avoids.
Remember, you come first.
No one will treat you with love or respect unless you do so first for yourself.
Releasing non-supportive relationships are one of the first ways to do this!
