Guarding peace means watching who influences us

“If you carry joy in your heart, you can heal any moment.”

—Carlos Santana

Chances are that we all have people in our lives who are not good for us. People who are kind of bad for us to be around. They may be terrible, but we are not enough when we are with them. They might be fun to be around, the life of the party, but that doesn't mean we are not pulled down.

I remember there was a person who was funny and great to be around, or so I thought. We would take our breaks together and talk about life. It wasn't too long before I started to notice my attitude going downhill fast. It didn't happen overnight but gradually decreased into the pit of negativity.

The funny thing about the pit of negativity is one rarely notices the journey down until it is too late. One day I wondered where that positive guy went. I realized my being around them was bad for me, but I really enjoyed spending time with them, so I ignored what I was feeling and continued taking my breaks with them.

I went deeper into negativity until I finally decided that I didn't have to break ties completely; however, I needed to guard my peace. I knew that in order to avoid the trap of negative thinking, I must limit my time with them.

Too many of us don't give a second thought to our mental health. Oh, we know having a great attitude is important, but most will keep being influenced by their outlook on life. We don't want to cut them out of our lives.

Just be mindful of who we are being influenced by. We might be trying to fool ourselves by convincing ourselves that we are not being influenced by them.

An attitude is forged by the thoughts and people we all have in our lives. This is what Les Brown said: “If you run around with losers, you become a loser.” He added that we will without even realizing it. That is the thing; it is extremely subtle. We often don't recognize it until the damage has been done.

It is ideal for us to keep people in our lives that we love and like, but it isn't always practical. Sometimes the people who are always hurting us should be our biggest fans. Instead, they always tell us how we can do better or how we are not good enough.

Ideally, it will be great if we can salvage the relationship. We also must realize that it takes two to tango. We can say to the person that we don't like when they do x, y or z, but it's up to them to receive it or reject it.

Hopefully, in most cases, we can talk to them and modify our interactions with them. However, there are always extreme cases where they will never respect us and tear us down whenever they have an opportunity. No matter who we are or what we have done, we never deserve that in our lives.

Some of us might want to consider that we might want to move out of that situation. For example, if a husband is beating his wife or emotionally abusing her, there is no reason under the sun that she deserves that, and no matter how painful it is, she should cut her losses and move on.

No matter what the situation may be, is it time for you to move on?

Kyle Snyder can be emailed at kylesnyder86@yahoo.com.