Who surrounds you? Who are those very special people who always encourage and motivate and push you forward?
There are a lot of different people surrounding us and they all seem to play a role in our lives somehow; consciously or unconsciously. We have the encouragers, they are the ones that cheer you on. We have the naysayers who tend to bring up all the reasons why you can’t do something. We have the “realists” they are the ones who have a hard time dreaming and think their realism is not negativity at all but facts! (I used to be that person). We have the “dreamers” who have great ideas but most have no follow through. We have the victims who may have had a bad experience at some time but instead of learning from it and pushing through they decided to make camp at the pity party. It’s a lot easier to remain scathed by a situation than to move past it and make life better because of it… Then we have the controllers. They need to have all their ducks in a row before doing anything. They tend to get stuck in all the organizing that they rarely move forward unfortunately. They have a hard time with other people infringing on their territory of success and even failure. And we have those that are fearful. They fear failure, what others think, making mistakes, looking badly, looking like they don’t have it all together all the time and especially anything new.
Who surrounds you the most? Who do you give the most voice to in your life’s decisions?
I believe that we all have the tendency of wanting someone to talk us down… We have a great idea, or want to take a leap of faith but we know it’ll require a lot of effort and growth and we just need that certain someone to talk us down so that we can remain at the same place, never moving forward, “happy” with where we are, living in complacency. I say happy loosely, because we are never truly happy when we know that our full potential hasn’t been realized.
As I mentioned earlier I used to be that person who considered herself to be a realist. “I’m not negative, I’m realistic,” I’d say. Someone would tell me something and I’d say, “ yeah right, that’s never going to happen.” It came from a feeling of uncertainty and insecurity and receiving some hard blows in my life. It came from my inability to take the steps of faith I needed to get to where I wanted to go. It came from my brain being bombarded with what everyone else wanted me to do, instead of standing on my own two feet and doing what I knew I should do.
Once we take the steps and disregard the noise then we can truly be whoever we were meant to be in that moment. The more you do it, the easier it gets and the stronger and wiser you’ll be.
Even though all the people listed are probably amazing people. Friends you’ve had since the beginning, family members whom you love! I get that. They are all wonderful people, I’m sure… The problem is that those we give the most voice in our lives will dictate the direction of our lives.
So ultimately it comes down to you deciding who do you want to be? If you had no restrictions in your life whatsoever what would you like to be doing? Where would you love to go? Who do you want to be like? Then take a look at the voices that surround you and realize if they will help you get there, or not.
Surround yourself with encouragers; people who will pray with you and for what is best for you. Find people with a likeminded goal, who will be taking the same kinds of steps in that direction. People who get it. People who have been there and have life lessons to help make your road a lot easier. Surround yourself with people who want you to succeed in everything you do, genuinely. Surround yourself with good people.