TOXIC

“Start ignoring toxic people who threaten your joy.”  

One of the most damaging things you could do is to speak negatively about yourself. Every time you think that you cannot do something, or that you are too afraid to do something, it reinforces your self-image in your subconscious mind which will act accordingly to bring about the image you set for yourself. While this is true for your self-image it can always be influenced by outside experiences. When someone else speaks negatively about you, and you hear it, this will be firmly planted in your subconscious. Regardless of how good your own self-image may be, this small amount of negativity will fester slowly deep within your own self-image until it causes you to doubt this great image that you have spent time building up in your mind.

While people can joke with each other, in a negative context, and some people can simply be rude, the most dangerous people are the ones who are part of your daily life (family, friends, significant other, work colleagues or even your boss) whom you can’t simply walk away from but may be constantly trying to bring you down or sabotage your efforts to live the life you want to live.

If you follow the steps in this book closely and begin to improve yourself dramatically as a result, you may see some of these people appear out of nowhere. They may have once seemed to be a positive influence on your existence until your improvements began to show and are now attempting to sabotage your efforts by bringing you down or speaking badly about you to others. You need to understand that they do not have a personal vendetta against you in particular, but rather they are jealous of your improvements and are driven by their own insecurities. The only reason they are trying to hinder your efforts is to keep you down at their own level. Don’t fall for this ploy by becoming equally negative towards them.

In some instances, these toxic people are afraid that your positive improvements will affect their own daily routines or habits. Human beings are fantastic at establishing set routines and sticking to them for as long as possible. When people or events threaten to disrupt these routines we have a bad habit of fighting against such change, even if this change could have a positive effect on our lives.

The most important thing is to maintain your good self-image and positive thoughts. To this end, those negative people must be removed from your life. While a large number of people will be unpleasant or annoying, they are not truly toxic to your existence. These unpleasant people can still remain in your life by putting a small bit of distance between you and them. The truly toxic people in your life are the ones who sap the energy from you or cause you to experience swings in your emotions so that you can be easily flung into a fit of rage or depression by interacting with them. A good example of this is the ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend who constantly attempts to interfere with your life by spreading rumors about you, attempting to sabotage your career, or directly contacting you with the intent to “flip your switches” causing you to react negatively. It is entirely up to you who you completely remove from your life and who you need to get some distance from.

Some of the characteristics of truly toxic people are:

• They can never accept blame, even for things they have done wrong
• They lie about you… all the time
• They tend to play the victim and will blame you for their own failings
• They will not accept any boundaries that you set
• They try to control you, in every way possible

While you may be able to ignore a toxic person in your life, your subconscious mind cannot and will take on board all of the negativity that comes your way. This can manifest in your own behaviour becoming toxic to others, even if you are not consciously aware of it happening.

When it comes to removing truly toxic people from your life, be warned that things can become very nasty, very quickly, with the effect that others, who may be close to you and the toxic individual, will inevitably side with the toxic one. Should this happen, you could lose people that you may not have intended to lose from your life.

As you are the only one who can decide who in your life are the truly toxic ones that must be removed you may decide that one of them is your spouse, partner or significant other. This is another area where you must be very careful when deciding if they are truly toxic and need to be removed as you may be making the best decision ever or you may be throwing away your one true love. Think this one over for a far longer time than you would anyone else. Removing them from your life may not be as easy as telling them to go away. As we have seen from the list of characteristics of truly toxic people, they will not respect your boundaries and will come back into your life several times before you are able to successfully remove them. Be calm and patient at all times. Before interacting with them, take several deep breaths and focus your attention on the positive aspect of not having them interfering in your life anymore. Confront them in a public place, so that they cannot react violently or lie about your interactions. Never argue with them, as this is exactly what they want, instead just restate your boundaries and walk away. It may require several of these interactions before they are successfully removed from your life for good.

Another, often overlooked, step is to block them from your social media feeds. When a truly toxic person is removed from your life they will try to discover other means of interacting in your life or controlling various aspects of your life. While it is also advised to delete their number from your phone, this may not be the best idea because you may forget their number, or they may try to contact you by making their number private, however, if you continue to store their number in your phone you will know who is trying to call you.

Going forward, it is important to live in such a way that when someone speaks negatively about you to others, that they simply will not be believed. If you can become a far nicer person who is happy and confident than you will never need to fear the negative or toxic elements that are talking about you behind your back.

Daily habits

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going. ” Jim Rohn (1930-2009)

Your daily habits can easily influence the subconscious to bring about change, stay stuck in a humdrum mediocre life, or ultimately destroy you. Always remember, that your subconscious is listening and paying attention to everything that you feed it, from thoughts and feelings to your habits and behaviour.

In order to cement a habit and turn it into an automated response, it is important that you perform the habit over 21 consecutive days. It is this repetition of behaviour that will force your subconscious mind to take notice and act in such a way that you become accustomed to performing this new habit, or action, on a daily basis.