My great friends took me out to a surprise dinner for my 21st birthday!
(Left to right: Santos, Aaron, Jackson, Alien, Luke, Adam, Ashlee, Cesar, and Landon taking the picture!!)
It really feels like we, as humans in leadership capacities or positions, can reach out our hand and bring the people up with us and save them for a survival mindset. To bring them to an abundance mindset. To help them think for themselves. Whatever it may be, it typically begins with self-awareness.
The issue is people cannot be saved unless they want it as much as we want it for them.
And as tough as this is — we as individuals with elevated thinking, crushing our goals, an alignment with God or the universe, or who just feel fulfilled in life, have to be the ones to pull through and take care of ourselves first. Otherwise who do those people have to look up to?
Self Love So that You Can Love Others.
We have faith that in time those people in our lives who we care about will come around and see the light that we see. They'll finally do the one thing that they've been saying they'll do for ages. But sometimes maybe not. And that really sucks when I’ve began to learn that. But perspective teaches me that so much is out of my control.
I really can only control myself, my mindset, and my energy.
Energy - the vibe people put out.
Environment - the space I’m occupying or the people I’m with.
Element - the thing that I’m doing or focused on.
With the guidance of Adam Carandang, I've found these three things to be so incredibly impactful on my mental well being. And I’ve found it’s very hard to be in control of all three of those things. In fact, even with all these great human behavior and psychology books — it’s near impossible to change humans or influence changes in them unless they don’t want it as bad for themselves as we do.
I constantly will find myself needing to remove myself in order to protect my time and energy. Which are our two most important assets.
I’m so blessed because I’ve found my TRIBE of people.
My tribe consists of dozens of people. We support each other. We push and challenge each other in personal and professional ways. We work hard together. We have fun together. We confide in one another and give each-other love when we need it.
We're not always all together but I’m usually doing one of those things with them. It's trusted people in my life genuinely build me up and push me to be my absolute best self. They give me the tough love. And they'll tell me how it is.
It’s taken me years to find this. I’ve had to cut a lot of people. But I’m very thankful to where I’m at because I am able to reap fruit for myself and use that fruit to help others.
Here's what's taken me until 2019 to realize:
When needing to remove some people from my life or make some association changes, I never viewed it as cutting them out. I don’t want it to come from a place of ego.
I just gently spend less time with them. But I never completely split away but just enough to protect my energy and environment.
And when I am with them — I am just extra intentional to be mindful of the way their mindset, negative speech, etc might pull me down. I use it as a challenge to not let it influence me. Because at the end of the day — those who we might push a little out of our lives to protect ourselves — they STILLL need love. They might even need it more than others.
So I’m constantly looking for that balance of still showing them love when they might most need it — but not allow them to plant seeds of negativity or what have you in my brain 🧠
Life is a constant journey of finding balance. Balance in spending time with my tribe to build me up and balance with being inclusive and accepting to everyone around me.
Connect with me on Twitter if you haven't already. And if you share on Twitter, thank you SO much. You're helping share the content more than you know. Engagement stacks! I genuinely am so grateful when someone shares my message on social media!
Is your email making you smarter?
No? Well it should be... every month I compile the top insights that I'm learning from personal branding, marketing and brand amplification, innovation and education, and personal development.
Subscribe here: Subscribe