Transform Your Life: 5 Steps to Embrace Positive People

Introduction

Many of us go through life expecting positive outcomes while surrounding ourselves with negative people. If you make the tough choice to only keep positive people in your life, then you will remove a major obstacle to manifesting your dream life.

Make sure to check out the below episode today for our story!

 

Quick Exercise

Before we dive into the importance of the people around you, perform the quick steps below. Remember to be honest with yourself in this exercise for it to be effective.

So what is this final average number? It’s you! Since we are highly influenced by the people around us, you are essentially the average of the people you surround yourself with. So if you’re wanting to live a life feeling positive and good all the time, does your number from the exercise above align with that expectation? If not, it might be time to eliminate or dramatically reduce the amount of time spent with the negative people in your life.

Step 1: Why You Need to Start Surrounding Yourself With Positive People

Okay, so from the exercise above you now know how the people around you might be influencing you, but is it really that big of a deal? Absolutely! People can provide great support for achieving your dreams, but they also have the power to bring you down. Negative people can make you feel like your life is never going to improve, and you end up feeling like you are stuck in an un-changeable situation.

Here are some reasons why you need to surround yourself with positive people in order to be happy:

1. They influence the way you see yourself and the world.
2. They help you focus on the happy and good things in life.
3. They provide advice that is helpful and positive when facing hard choices.
4. They encourage you to ignore negativity.
5. They push you to follow your dreams and do what makes you happy.

As you can see, these are big benefits that can have life-changing effects.

Related Episode:

Since the energy of people around you affects your level of positivity, make sure to check out our Positive Self-Talk Will Change Your Life episode today.

Step 2: How to Increase the Number of Positive People in Your Life

Now you can see the importance of surrounding yourself with positive people, but what if you don’t currently have many of them around you? The good news is that there are countless ways to increase the number of positive people in your life.

Some of these are:

1. Reach out to positive people you know from the past but have lost touch with.
2. Use social media as a means of connecting with positive people.
3. Create a whole new profile on social media to start fresh with positive connections and profiles.
4. Join sites like MeetUp or Facebook Groups that have healthy positive interests in common with you and the person you want to be.
5. Volunteer or join a club or classes to meet new people in a positive setting.

We know it’s not always comfortable stepping out of you comfort zone, but the power of positive people more than outweighs any discomfort in the process.

Step 3: Why Should You Define What a "Positive Person" Is?

If you’re going to try to find more positive people, then it’s necessary to make sure you understand what a “positive person” is for you. This is important since certain traits could seem positive at the surface level, but could ultimately lead to a negative impact on your life. For example, maybe someone has “fun” energy and makes you laugh, which is certainly positive in that sense, but what if that same person is irresponsible and constantly distracts you from the goals you are trying to accomplish? Definitely not a positive influence in that case.

The point here is, don’t try to fool yourself. We all know the behaviors in our lives that are toxic and the ones that are good for us, and we know when someone is, or will, lead us down one path or the other. You need to clearly understand what the most critical positive things are you want in life and make sure the people you associate yourself with will encourage you along that path.

The most important thing, in the end, is that you clearly define and understand in your mind what a positive person looks like before you bring new people into your life.

Step 4: How to Deal with Negative Individuals in Your Life

It is important to understand that dealing with negatives can be a time-consuming and frustrating process. If you have been dealing with negative individuals for a long time, it may be difficult for you to identify the best way of coping with them even if you have tried many different tactics before. It is often hard to find the right words or tactics that will help you solve the problem. In this step we will discuss some effective ways of dealing with negative individuals in your life.

There are three broad steps to removing negative people from your life. The first step is to identify the negative people (see the opening exercise). They may be family members, friends, coworkers, etc. The next step is to list the negative effects these people have on you and your happiness. Finally, you need to decide what you'll do with this information. You can choose to eliminate these people from your life or change how they interact with you.

Here are some tips on things to do once you have identified these people and the impact they have on you:

1. If you’re comfortable, try talking with the person about how you feel. Best case they change, and if not this lets you know you are making the right decision in reducing your time around them.
2. Intentionally losing touch with that person.
3. Changing the subject when they start talking about negative things.
4. If you can’t fully lose touch, ignore them as much as possible (yes, we know this sounds harsh!)
5. Setting boundaries to reduce time around them.

Step 5: Decide Which is More Important, You or Others?

Although most people realize that some changes need to be made regarding the people they surround themselves with, many still struggle to actually commit to making a change. It may not be easy to cut people out of your life, but you have to ask yourself if your mental and physical health is worth it? Research from Johns Hopkins has shown “that there is definitely a strong link between ‘positivity’ and health. Additional studies have found that a positive attitude improves outcomes and life satisfaction across a spectrum of conditions—including traumatic brain injury, stroke and brain tumors.” Given these serious implications, is it really worth it to continue prioritizing others over yourself?

Conclusion

You can clearly see the major importance of making sure everyone around you adds positive energy to your life and helps move you along the path toward your dreams. Not only has positive energy been shown to significantly improve your mental and physical health, but it also naturally helps you attract and manifest good things into your life.

Ultimately, when it comes to choosing positive people over negative people in your life, you have to decide which is more important… you or others?

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