Reality

Today’s Advice: Ban Toxicity from Your Life

This will be a short and sweet one today.

If I could give one piece of advice to everyone, it would be to ban toxicity from your life. Wherever that toxicity comes from, just give it a swift kick in the ass out of your life.

Sometimes, toxicity can come from overthinking things until they stress you out, but most of the time, it comes from others in your life. It can come from friends, family, coworkers, etc. You can’t always avoid being around toxic people in your life, but if you can then do it. If you can’t, try to at least adjust the amount of time your spending around them or how much they affect your life.

Anyone who talks down to you, doesn’t respect you, have YOU make all the effort in a relationship, makes you feel like you’re not worthy, makes judgements on you, tries to control your life, etc. is toxic. You may not even realize it’s happening or you may just ignore it. If you’re trying to live your “best life”, toxicity can’t be a part of it.

There is nothing more freeing than getting toxic people out of your life. It’s so much more peaceful to either surround yourself with people who appreciate you, lift you up. encourage you, etc. or if you don’t have anyone like that, being with just yourself is still a much better alternative than having toxic people in your life.

I’ll share a story later about this, but for now: take care of YOURSELF by eliminating toxicity. It’s a great first step.

Take care.

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Unselfish Thinking

How To Experience the Satisfaction of Unselfish Thinking

1. Put Others First

2. Expose Yourself to Situations Where People Have Needs

3. Give Quietly or Anonymously

4. Invest in People Intentionally

5. Continually Check Your Motives

Source: Thinking For Change, John C. Maxwell

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Common Courtesy Lost

 

“Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart” ~Henry Clay

 

It is hard for me to comprehend how people and even businesses just can’t seem to understand how common courtesy goes a LONG way.

Common courtesy is SIMPLE aka NOT hard. It requires so little, yet people just can’t seem to do it. I don’t get it. When a restaurant screws up an order, TELL the customer what happened, apologize, and, in some cases, comp all or part of that meal…especially if it’s a group. If you’re an apartment complex, check your voicemail and respond back so that “someone” doesn’t have to go without hot water for 4 days. If you’re a friend and you can’t do something you said you were going to do, at least TELL someone you can’t do it rather than having them wait for you.

I could go on and on. I just don’t understand how common courtesy has gotten so lost in our society. Common courtesy may not change a situation, but it will at least lower the pissed-off factor. Ignoring people, not giving them the full story, etc. just give the impression that you don’t care and that’s not something anyone wants to feel, personally or in a business situation.

 
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New Year…so what?

So, it’s a “new” year. A new year means nothing to me. Some people look at a new year as a way to start fresh. You can do that any day, though.

All a new year is to me is a new year for people to do the same things over and over again. People always talk about how they want something different, but they continue to do the same things they did before. That’s why New Year’s Resolutions don’t last. If people want to change, they will. If they don’t, they won’t. It’s that simple. The clock/calendar changing over to a new year is irrelevant.

My only (false) hope each year is that people finally grow up. That’s it. There are attention-whores who need to finally realize the truth about themselves. There are selfish people who need to realize their words and actions are contradictory & they can end up hurting calvinhobbsrespeople. There are people who just need to finally decide to put the changes they want to make into action.  Again, these are really decisions people can make ANY day.

I’m not perfect. I’m constantly re-examining myself. I know my faults and even I keep doing the same things every year. I put up with more than I should and let a lot of things/behaviors go that I shouldn’t. It’s not the new year that’s going to change anything. I, just like everyone else, have to decide for myself what’s worth putting up with and what’s not. Do I let people continue to get away with blowing me off, forgetting me, talking to me only when they want something, etc. or do I finally say I’ve had enough and actually put that into some kind of action? I don’t know the answers yet, but a new year doesn’t give me answers. I have to answer that myself on a daily basis. I like looking at the “big picture”, but it’s the little ones that are a daily struggle not a YEARLY struggle.

A new year is just a mere change in the calendar. It doesn’t change people. People change themselves…whenever they CHOOSE to.

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Glory Days Part 1

When I was growing up, I never cared what people thought of me. I was the nerdy girl in glasses who was basically a loner most of her life. I had friends I played with when I was younger and my Dad always said I never met a stranger, but nothing really ‘stuck’ much when it came to friends for me. I just always wanted to be nice to everyone whether we were friends or not.

As I got older, I was never a part of any cliques in school.  I was still the nerdy girl with glasses and the teacher’s pet. I liked being the teacher’s pet, although I wasn’t the teacher’s pet that kissed ass. I just liked grading papers and helping. I was always the helper. My 4th grade teacher was pregnant at the end of my 4th grade year and invited me to spend a week at her house that summer.  I remember spending it helping out with her new baby boy. She also bought me a yellow dress and shoes and took me to a children’s ballet. The next year, a teacher of mine heard me sing in the talent show and decided to start a school choir…because of me. When you’re that young, it feels really good to feel like adults respect you that much.

In high school, I was still a nerdy girl with glasses and became the girl the popular kids picked on. It was a little mean, but not in the way that some kids got picked on. I was the ugly, nerdy girl so most of it was as much of the popular guys embarrassing each other as it was about embarrassing me. One guy would say “Hey, Todd wants to go out with you”. Todd would blush and get upset and say “No, I don’t!”. Other ugly, awkward girls like me who were teased would go cower in a corner and cry.  I was NEVER going to be that girl. Honestly, the teasing didn’t make me want to cry anyway. I found it amusing for some reason.  I’m not going to lie and say it didn’t hurt my feelings, but I never felt like crying…not even when people I thought were actually friends of mine decided to get in on the joke.

To be continued….

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The Giving Up Point

At what point do you consider something a lost cause and give up? At what point do you make a decision to not try anymore?

If someone makes plans with you over and over again and cancels at the last minute over and over again, I think that’s a pretty good sign they don’t care about KEEPING plans with you. It’s a clear sign they don’t respect your time or your feelings so why continue the pattern?

Giving up depends on how close you are to someone, too. If you are building a relationship with someone, being blown off over and over again is an early sign of things to come. If you decide to let it go, there may be a bigger fall waiting in the wings.  Been there, done that.

Everyone has to decide for themselves what their own giving up point is. It boils down to how much of yourself you’re willing to give up for someone else. Respect is a big thing. If someone doesn’t have that for you, it’s sometimes best to cut those ties because the chance of things changing aren’t very high.

 

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