How to Remove Toxic People from your Life
How to Remove Toxic People from your Life
I wrote this article because I realized how many of my clients have achieved being committed to a healthier lifestyle but are still in a negative environment because of a toxic person in their life. It breaks my heart to see them make such growth physically and mentally but have their future and potential held back because of a toxic person.
Not every relationship you have is going to last forever, most are lessons that help us grow and that’s ok! You should never feel bad or guilty about severing ties with people that don’t bring anything positive or inspiring into your life. In fact, keeping people in your life that weigh you down holds you back from reaching your full potential.
It’s a lot easier said than done to remove toxic people but in a very real sense, your life depends on it. When you keep a toxic friend, boyfriend/girlfriend, co-worker, etc in your life you’re sabotaging your happiness and growth. It’s important you learn to take the blinders off and identify who these individuals are because it’s crucial to your well being, happiness and success.
The question you need to ask yourself is why you think we deserve to be treated this way? No matter who they are, no one has the right to make you feel bad about yourself, cause you hurt of any kind, or manipulate you into thinking you’re anything but special. You’re not responsible for the actions and behavior of others and most importantly you cannot change them! The only thing you can change is how you allow others to treat you.
SIGNS OF A TOXIC PERSON
1. THE TAKER
At some point in our lives we’ve all encountered this person, the one who asks you for stuff but never does anything for you in return. These are takers. Doing things for others makes me really happy, so I don’t have a problem with that until it starts to feel like I’m being taken advantage of or used by the other person. The simple solution is to stop doing things for them and say “no”, if there friendship is real, they’ll make an effort to stay in your life, if not, they weren’t in it for the right reasons.
2. THE NEGATIVE NANCY
This person, not matter what, will always find a way to complain or be negative about everything in their life. With out realizing it this person can affect how you feel and look at your life too. When your surround yourself with negativity, you get negativity.
3. THE JUDGEMENTAL ONE
Judgmental people will find any reason to criticize everything around them. They’re insecure with themselves so they have to bring others down to feel better. No one is perfect, how can you get to know people if you’re judging them first?
4. THE GOSSIP QUEEN
People who gossip do it because they’re insecure and they like the attention they get from spreading a story, whether it’s truthful or not. The word vomit becomes second nature to them and if you’re not careful you can get sucked into spreading rumors as well. I’ve always found these people to be the easiest to cut out of my life, because if they’re gossiping to you, they’re gossiping about you.
5. THE RULE OF 5
There is a saying that “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”. This means that we are greatly influenced by the relationships we keep. I’m not saying that you’re going to think exactly the same way as those people but who we keep close affects our way of thinking, self-esteem, mood, and decision making.
How to Cut out Toxic People
Removing someone toxic from your life is most likely not going to be easy. Think of it in terms of a toxic poison spreading through your body, in order to survive the bacteria evolves and gets more and more toxic. The same concept applies to toxic people and more often than not we don’t realize it’s happening to us. Does this person make you second guess yourself, make you feel sad, uncomfortable, vulnerable, and/or like less of a person? If yes, then you’ve been infected by their poison.
So how you go about reclaiming your life and happiness back?
Put yourself first. It’s not going to be easy to remove a toxic person because they already don’t respect you. Know that they’re going to come back even if you tell them go away, prepare yourself to have to stand your ground and tell them several times.
Don’t Argue, you don’t need to explain yourself. The way toxic people get you to come back is by manipulating you and invoking arguments or fights. This isn’t a debate, you’ve made your decision and you’ve got to stick to it. Don’t feed their attempts to stay in your life.
Block them. In this day and age it’s hard to remove someone completely from you life because of technology. If you have to, block them. In a situation where you have a toxic co-worker that you have to work with, distance yourself as much as you can without it hurting your job. In a serious case you might be better off searching for a different job.
Do things that make you happy. Start picking up new hobbies or getting more involved in your current ones. Spend more time with yourself and get to know YOU better. Build yourself up and begin to know what it’s like to truly be happy!
You deserve to be treated like the amazing human you are, it’s up to you show yourself that. <3
Xo
Colleen