Attracting The Positive By Leaving The Negative

I was sitting down, looking at the friends next and opposite from me. They were all smiling and laughing, making sure they were close to their loved once as the clock was almost striking twelve. Another year gone, another year yet to come. When the clock turned twelve we all wished each other a Happy New Year and the men stormed outside to light the fireworks, followed by the kids and the women.
Side note; always fun to see grown men turn into children again when they get to play with fireworks
While I slowly followed the group outside I was over thinking my last year and made a pact with myself, a New Years pact and now almost 6 months later I havent forgotten. (like most people do )
The pact I made was loud and clear; Leave all negativity behind and focus on the positive. I opened the door and stepped into 2018 full positivity.

I know, easy said then done. And how in the world do you stop yourself from feeling negative or sad sometimes? Well to be completely honest, at moments im failing miserably at it. I really have to give myself an enormous kick in the ass, but it works and I’m feeling super good about it.
I realized that I needed to be wanted and wanted to be needed. That itself is not so bad, and I think its even very normal to feel that way, however I wanted attention on my terms and my time. When I didn’t get that validation that I was seeking I felt miserable and sad. I now realize I don’t need approval to follow my dreams. I don’t need someone elses validation to set my goals.
I was asking too much from the people around me, expecting them to make time to applaud me whenever I expected them to do so. When this was not given at my wakening call, I got upset.
You must be thinking  ‘what a drama queen ’
And you are right, I could be and still can be a real drama queen. But these days I only turn into that when someone is being disrespectful, towards me or the people I care about.
Making the pact also meant closing the door on some draining friendships. The kind that where only one-way communication and the people who turned up only when they wanted to or when there was something to gain. Now that was and still is a hard thing to do, because when someone asks me a favour or my help my instinct is to immediately go to the rescue.

I’m not saying you shouldnt help people if you can, I urge you to do. It is a great quality to be giving. However be careful with people who only take and never give back. It is not always necessary to get a ‘Thank you’ , giving without expecting to get something is return is beautiful. But don’t put yourself in the position where you only say yes, give and never get anything in return. You are not a push over, right?
No right?
Set your standards high!
If you don’t see yourself as a high value person, than why in the world would someone else?
When you let negative people control your life, you turn out to be negative yourself. No matter how hard you try to be nice, sweet and giving. These people will come

Wave the negativity goodbye!

to you on their terms and their terms only, they will give you a pat on the back or some of their attention when they need something. But when the deal is done, you’ll be back at square one, no where, and the circle will repeat itself again and again.
These circles will  repeat themselves untill you decide to stop it.
Only YOU can stop it!
How?
Owww here we go again, I have said it before; SAY NO!
No, I have no time.
No, I can’t help you with that.
No, I already have too much work on my desk.
Or the best one, NO, without a single explication. You don’t always need to explain yourself. You don’t have to tell why you do what you do, or wont do. The only one who you need explaining to is yourself.
People in your world who wont condone this new YOU, will dismiss you and leave you behind.  That sucks for a bit but these people are not your friends or soul mate. True friends and true love will be amazed by the new high value strong person you are.

Now a person who thinks highly of themselves are not always arrogant people (okay some really are). But there is truly a difference. When you KNOW and BELIEVE you have something to add to someones life, you wont feel the need to ask for attention all the time. Of course you can ask for attention, but you wont be an obsessive attention seeker.

I know, this sounds a bit cryptic right? I’ll sketch an example for you to clarify;
Sarah is a lovely girl, late twenties busy with work, friends and dating. A lot of dating   She just couldn’t keep a man around for longer than a few months. One night she came crying at my doorstep ‘Anna, it has been 2 days and he wont answer any of my calls or texts.’ She looked at me with her red shut through eyes and I could see her pain and confusion. What did she do wrong? Why didn’t he answer to her? Why would he leave her hanging like this?

She explained her side of the story and I came to realize Sarah made two crucial errors.
ONE: Sarah only gave and never took. She put aside her appointments just to go on a date. She took his phone calls late at night, when she actually should be sleeping. She never said no or made her own terms. Sarah put her new man on a higher pedestal than herself, making him more important than her. It made her look easy (low value) boring (low value) and by putting herself aside she quickly became another version of herself. Not the girl this man started dating with.

SECOND: Sarah was only dating this man for a few months. Kind of exclusive but not a full-blown relationship. By texting and calling him constantly she took his freedom away. When he needed or wanted some space she kept texting or calling, becoming a needy woman.
What could she have done differently? 

• kept her boundaries in place (not rescheduling her whole agenda to make time for a phone call or date)
• she shouldnt be measuring her value on the response she got from this man
• she could have texted a (one not ten) simple text and when he didn’t reply instantly leave it like that (maybe he was just busy with work or something could have happened)
• she could have giving him more space

With giving someone more space, I don’t mean you should step back and undermine yourself. Create and make use of the time and space from each other to do the things you like to do. Read, go to the gym, hang out with friends, do fun stuff. You will see, when you catch up with each other afterwards, you both have stories to tell and you both keep being interesting.

I can now tell you that I gave Sarah wonderful relationship advice and they all lived happily ever after but that’s not what happened. For one, I’m not a relationship therapist, I was just a good friend listening to her story and I was a shoulder to cry on. Second Sarah came to the conclusion she was handling this the wrong way. She ended dating with this man, worked on herself esteem and the men are now drawn to her like honey to a jar. Sarah is enjoying her new high value self now.
I truly want you to understand what I mean with ‘adding value to someone elses life’ so I will sketch a second example her.

Diana an independent woman, busy getting her career in the way she want it to be, and that is UP. One day, during a great lunch get together with friends, she suddenly busted out in tears. Our strong, independent, career tiger busted out in tears in front of us and everybody was literary shocked.
Diana got herself together very quickly and started to revile the reason why she broke down. Things where not so great at work and she felt she was always been put down. When she had a good idea, saving the company money her manager would present it to the management like his idea, taking all the credit. Her manager turned out to be a bully. Screaming at her, putting her down, making her feel like she didn’t bring any value to the company. Then after a day he would be complementing like he was her friend.
She worked hard and went out of her way to prove her self. Her manager kept kicking her down by pestering behavior. Diana didn’t know what to do with this situation and it was eating her alive.
I heard her story and a few things came to mind. 
ONE: Diana gave and never took. She gave all her energy, enthusiasm in her work and never took something in return. Where she should have taken the credit for her work she gave it away.
SECOND: She let herself being disrespected placing herself in a lower position as a human than her manager. All humans are the same and deserve the same respect, age, race or even position have nothing to do with mutual respect for humankind. 
What could she have done differently? 

• Diana could have had a conversation explaining this is not the behavior she expected from her manager
• She could have gotten another job
• She shouldnt be measuring her value on the response she got from this man
• She should keep her boundaries and self-respect
• Diana should have realized how much value she was adding

To explain this persons type of behavior would take up this entire blog, so saving that for another time, maybe. Lets just say that these kind of people need to be in controle of the situation and that includes controling the people in it. His solution for not losing a great employee, was making her feel like she had no other option. He made her feel bad about herself so he could feel good and be the super hero.
Diana’s solution? She stood up for herself and eventually got herself another job. She left the negativity behind and moved on.
Me, I’m trying to leave the negative, draining and consuming people behind me. If someone doesn’t call me back, text me or reply to me that is fine. I have learned not to assume things anymore.
‘Assuming is the mother of all fuck ups’
However if people keep bringing me down, keep ignoring me, I will distance myself from them. I wont block them out, because maybe they have a plausible reason for not being in touch. However I wont let it affect me as a person.
Same thing with social media. I used to post something on Facebook or Instagram and felt down if not enough people LIKED it. I was letting other people dictate what was good in my live and not. If I didn’t get enough likes, than it meant it was not great, funny or sharable right?
NO! NO! NO! So wrong….
If you think you have something worth sharing, GO SHARE IT. It doesn’t matter if you get none, 2 or 100 likes on it. Those likes don’t define you are a person. And by the way, you don’t push like with everything you see online, do you? That doesn’t mean you didn’t like that post, that you didn’t laugh about the video of that cat or smiled when you saw your friend’s daughter in the kitchen cabinet. The amount of likes you get dont say anything about you as a person, it is WHAT you post that counts.
If I see things on social media and each time it is negative, making me feel low value and stress me out, it has to go. I just don’t want it in my live (timeline) anymore.
To attract posivity, you have got to leave the negativity behind.
I learned that by making small changes, being more open, spontaneous and positive I get the same things in return. And it doesn’t even cost me much energy. Being negative and draining cost me a lot more
The fact is we want to keep the people around who add value to our lives. That goes for work relations, friendships and love-relationships. So surround yourself with people who add value to yours and know what you bring to the table. After all you are high value right?
Cheers for now