Surround Yourself

A series of recent events got me thinking about the concept of surrounding yourself with positive people. I've heard this advice before in various different forms and it is starting to sink in. Since it's been on my mind, I'm starting to search out encouragement to do just that.

"If your friends aren’t ambitious, if they don’t have clear plans, you probably won’t either. This doesn’t mean to reject them, but it does mean if your friends want to lay around doing nothing all day, get some new friends. The single greatest influence playing on you is your friends. You will become like the people you hang around." - Donald Miller

"Cut the cynicism: Leaders don’t roll their eyes, children do." -also Donald Miller

"Surround Yourself with What Inspires You. Get Rid of Everything Else - Days are too short and time far too precious to surround yourself with downers and ghosts and judgment and people who bite. Period." - Rebecca Woolf

"People who want to run successful businesses need to surround themselves with successful, motivated, driven people." - Megan Auman

"You want great habits and ways of thinking to seep into you. You want peer pressure to have a useful purpose like encouraging you never to cheat on your spouse or to volunteer to tutor young kids or adults. You don’t want it telling you to buy the latest non-essential object as the only way to feel worthy." - Marita Greenidge

"Surround yourself with positive people who love life and love you." - Doug Fleener

So does this mean if you feel like someone isn't positive or good for your development that you kick them to the curb? I don't think that's ok, in a way we need those people too. I just feel a need at this point in my life to seek advice and wisdom from those who have positive attitudes and care for me in a way that I need it, so that I can give the same care to others. Sometimes we simply cannot avoid negative people in our lives. Any thoughts on how to find this balance and how not to let negative people pull you down with them?

I.M.

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