There’s an old adage which says, “Show me the company you keep and I will show you the direction of your life.” Yesterday while listening as a client proudly cited her laundry list of reasons why she is stuck and can’t move forward, I cued in on one of the top quoted sources of a non-productive life. I know you’ve heard of time-management, right? Well, I’m here to tell you there’s more to it than just managing your time. It’s more important that you keep others from interrupting your life. More like people-management. This is the issue that unfortunately has my client mired.
The right friends are essential to our spiritual, physical, emotional and financial well-being. I’ve learned the people we associate with not only affect our attitude, but our views and beliefs too. On the surface they may not appear to be a “thorn” in the side, however, if you intentionally pay close attention to their personality traits, you may discover their toxic behaviors. For several years I thought my relationship with someone I’ll call “Narcissistic Nellie” was comparable with my life goals and dreams. She is a good person. However, later on I recognized the one-sided conversations, the extreme sense of self-importance and belief that the world revolved around her. She was overt about getting her needs met on many occasions even with my skills and on my time. Oh how I often wanted to tell her, “It isn’t about you.” And that’s putting it gently.
When you genuinely love people and want to help them, you may not realize the types of personalities that the enemy sends to interrupt your life, zap your energy leaving nothing left for yourself.