Together is only better IF you are better together
I ran across a quote recently: “Don’t ever beg for a friendship for relationship with anyone. If you don’t receive the same effort you give out, then let them go.” When you start seeing your worth, you’ll find it harder to stay around people who don’t. Stop chasing after people and being the only one trying to fix everything. It’s mentally and physically exhausting. You have to find peace with whoever comes and goes from your life. Don’t be the only one putting in effort because you will lose yourself trying to rescue someone else. I am utterly convinced that our relationships are the key to our destiny. Not everyone is for every season in your life. Without reciprocity, there is no authentic relationship. Networking with everyone does not mean you necessarily connect with anyone.
If people won't let you grow, flourish, or soar then they are not part of your future no matter how much they were a part of your past. Don’t confuse the length of the friendship for the strength of the friendship. If the people around you don’t want to see you win, if they don’t want to see the best you; if they don’t inspire you or motivate you - you don’t have a circle, you have a cage. Sometimes the best way to add to your life is not to add to it but to subtract from it. If you are not respected, valued, celebrated, or esteemed amongst those you call friends, find new friends. If you have to minimize who you are so that others feel comfortable with who they are, then build some new relationships. Together is only better if you are better together.
It’s very challenging emotionally and mentally to be in a place if the people closest to you don’t appreciate you, support you or don’t express their love to you. We all have those people in our lives that we desperately crave for them to tell us that what we do matters to them but also that they admire us. We want to be admired by those who really know us. We can fake everybody else out but if the people who are closest to us and know us the most, if they don’t think we’re full of it, then we’re doing something. You don’t need a large number of people to be for you or who really know you.
When we avoid difficult conversations we trade short-term discomfort for long-term dysfunction – and this especially includes conversations with ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we need to do but we don’t want to do it. So, we pile more knowledge and information on top of the thing we know that we’re supposed to do. We don’t need more clarity or information - we need courage to step out. If we deal with what’s in us, it will change what’s going on around us.
Fearless is a myth. We often want to wait until the fear goes away to take action. We assume we’ll wake up one day free of fear and then we’ll be ready. But it doesn’t work that way. The fear only persists and gets stronger. The real courage comes from recognizing the fear, feeling the fear, and jumping anyway. Taking the leap. Telling the truth. Choosing not to wait anymore. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the ability to act in the presence of fear. A hip-hop artist I enjoy has a lyric that says: “They say fear haunts and pain hates. I say pain strengthens and fear drives faith.”
Anytime you have the urge to return to a toxic environment, keep in mind the damage it had on your sanity and the duration of time it took to regain your peace of mind.
If you put your validation in other people’s hands you will have to keep going back to them for it. If another person is at the center of your focus and they are responsible for the fulfillment of your joy, you will always be miserable. Don’t give someone so much power over you that their silence leaves you questioning your worth.
Your value doesn’t decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth. You don’t walk away from a bad situation to prove your worth. You walk away because you allowed someone else to dictate your value and found yourself believing it. Just because they couldn’t see your value doesn’t mean you need to lower your price!