By yourlife

Who are you Spending Your Precious Time With?

Dec 16, 2013 | 3:32 AM

Contributed by Stephanie Staples at Your Life Unlimited

Surrounding yourself with people who fuel you, build you up, challenge you to be better, support you and are they type of people you would like to be like is a critical for developing your own success.

Have you ever had someone new come into your life. Clearly troubled and with a past that makes their present challenging, these people sometime  latch onto us and we as fixers, latch onto them.

Sometimes their life is so different from ours, so unusual that it gets easy to get caught up and fascinated with it all.

At least that’s what happened to me recently.

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The trouble was, as a helper, I of course was slipping into that mode. And that was not what they wanted from me, they did not want me to fix them, they wanted me to come down their path, they wanted to fix me. Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever tried to change someone else?

If you have, like me, spent much time and effort trying to create the kind of person you can be proud of, the kind of person that makes a positive difference, we must ask ourselves one big question. Do we really want a few bad decisions influenced by someone who does not have our best interests at heart to render all that important work we’ve done on ourselves meaningless?

We have to be purposeful and  careful about the type of people that we spend our time with nowadays. We need to seek out others who can help us be a better people, who we can continually learn and grow with and who challenge us to be an improved version of who we were yesterday.

This person is not helping me be better, they are encouraging the opposite. This person is not good for me and even though I want to help them ‘be better’ – that is not what they are looking for.

The solution, a friendly but firm farewell. No hard feelings, open arms for the future if something should change on their end.  But for now, I need to save myself, not them.

I share this personal story with you in the hopes that you might look around in your own life and see you who is there helping you be a better person and who is not.

Perhaps it is time to do a clean sweep of the people in your life, perhaps it is time to reassess what being a friend really means. Perhaps it is time to let go of someone who may have been a fit for you in the past, but is not any longer.

Perhaps it is time to put up some boundaries and let people know what you will and will not tolerate.

Here’s is an easy activity to help you take a serious look at the people in your life.

Write down a list of the 10 people who you spend the most time with. On a scale of 1-10, put a number beside each person that correlates with how positive an impact they have in your life.

Be brutally honest, no one else needs to see your list.  * Star *  everyone over 7 and send them a big thanks!

Then take a close look at those you rated as under 5 and ask yourself if there is something you need to change in the upcoming months. do you need to look at why those people are still in your life? If they are family or colleagues that you must see, do you need to put up some boundries around the amount of time you spend with them and/or how you are letting them treat/effect you.

Our integrity, humanity and sometimes even our sanity is riding on the crucial decision of who we allow to share our personal time/space with.

Start the new year with people who value you helping them grow and who get jazzed about lifting you up to new heights.  People matter, you deserve to surround yourself with the best.

Steph  

Stephanie Staples, CSP* is the author of When Enlightening Strikes – Creating a Mindset for Uncommon Success and an internationally acclaimed motivational speaker. She empowers audiences & clients across North America to bring their ‘A’ game to work and to life. Stephanie has a special interest in working with and empowering nurses and healthcare providers. She happily calls Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada home.  You can get loads of complimentary resources to help with issues such as work/life balance, wellness, stress management and happiness in general, as well as find out more information about her coaching and speaking services at http://www.YourLifeUnlimited.ca. * Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), conferred by the National Speakers Association is the speaking profession’s international measure of professional platform proficiency. Less than 10 percent of speakers have earned this credential and are recognized as some of the best in their fields. Stephanie was one of only five professional speakers in  Canada (and the only woman) to attain this designation in 2013.

The post Who are you Spending Your Precious Time With? first appeared on Your Life Unlimited.

Contributed by Stephanie Staples at Your Life Unlimited