It’s not just your unused possessions that are cluttering up your life. People can be clutter too. The people you mix with fall into two distinct categories: those who make you feel good, and those who make you feel bad.
How Do They Make You Feel?
If you examine your feelings after you’ve spent time with a particular person, then you’ll have a clue as to which category that person falls into. If you feel angry, negative, uncomfortable, or depressed, then the person you’ve just seen could be bad for you. On the other hand if you feel happy, amused, intrigued, or relaxed after spending time with someone, then that person is clearly a good influence in your life.
Your emotions before you spend time with a person are very significant too. Are you looking forward to seeing them, or are you dreading the encounter? Do you feel uneasy at the thought of spending a whole evening with a particular person, or delighted?
Junk people fall into several distinct categories:
Time Stealers
People who take up all of your time can be a negative influence in your life. Those who keep asking you to help them with some activity, who spend all your time talking about the difficulties in their life, who keep giving you jobs to do, but who never seem to do anything for you in return. When these people ring up your first thought is ‘I wonder what they want me to do now?’
Happiness Vampires
Some people suck all the joy out of you. After just a few minutes spent in their company, you feel a physical and mental slump. They spend so much time talking about how terrible everything is, they view the world in such a negative light, that they can make you feel completely hopeless. Susan Jeffers in ‘Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway’ [UK Affiliate Link] [US Affiliate Link} refers to these people as the ‘Moan and Groan Society’.
Guilt Trippers
There are some people who make you feel guilty every time you see them, because they always seem to have a problem. Everything is so awful for them, life goes so badly for them, people are so mean to them, they have such bad luck… you know the kind of person I’m referring to. If you aren’t constantly helping them, then you feel mean. If things are going well for you, then you feel guilty.
Super-Competitive People
There are those who view everything in life as a competition. Every activity and even every conversation has a winner and a loser in their eyes. They talk and behave aggressively, they have to do everything better than everyone else, and they make sure the whole world knows about it. Even a simple conversation becomes a competition for them, so that they have to top every story and have the last word too.
Malicious People
Some people seem to take delight in making others feel uncomfortable. They like to say provocative or critical things, and enjoy the reaction they cause. They like to put others down, to highlight others weak points, to accuse them of things, and to make them feel inadequate. Nothing is ever their fault as the other person is always to blame for everything. They tend to be moody because this is the best way to keep others off balance. These people are probably the most corrosive out of all the junk people.
Avoid At All Costs
You will probably find that every person you know can occasionally fall into one of these behaviour types, after all, no-one is perfect. But if someone you know consistently makes you feel bad then this person is a junk person. Junk people don’t benefit you in any way at all and should be avoided at all costs. If you have friends who are junk people then see less of them, or ideally find new friends. If family members fall into this category then spend less time with them. Work colleagues can be hard to avoid, but if you work for a malicious person then I would look for another job.
Life is short and precious so don’t waste it on people who don’t deserve you. Anyone can go through a bad patch, but a person who consistently makes you feel bad is a toxic influence in your life.
Nurture Your Own Success
Avoiding the junk people, and spending your precious time and emotional energy with people who make you feel good, will revolutionise how you feel. Mix with positive people who will encourage your ambitions, care about your feelings, and give you reasons to feel confident about yourself. This will create a nurturing environment around you which will incubate your success.
I agree that we sometimes need to ‘limit’ our time with some people who drain us of energy but I still believe that every person is valuable in God’s eyes and that He can use us for good to pour love, joy and peace into their lives, but only if we ourselves know His love joy and peace. I believe that there are ‘no junk people’ because the phrase totally devalues them. We are all precious in the sight of God, created in His image. If we know and understand that then we have a place in praying for and loving these so called ‘junk people’, rather than just writing them off to nothing more than the rubbish we throw away. God has the power to change people, provided that they want to be changed. I believe God’s sort of love (not the one pushed by the media) is unconditional and often sacrifical to give. My view is that to put oneself in the middle of the universe will never lead to true peace and joy, which comes from putting others first. The times that I have given myself to people in great need have been to me the most joyful, as I have seen that person gradually released from fear, anxiety, worry, etc. In short I don’t want to have success that revolves around me….it’s not what I can do, but God. I can remember a time when God never gave up on me and that’s how I want to live, even though I don’t always get it right.
Anyway Lynne, this is a subject close to my heart, hence the loooong comment.
I understand completely Sandie and I would never want to write a person off. I like your attitude of wanting to help others 🙂
However you need to be a good place yourself in order to be able to help other people. If you find that a particular person is making you feel down or hopeless, then it’s often best to see less of that person for the sake of your own mental health and to steer them towards someone else who is in a better position to help them.
Jean-Paul Sartre’s oft quoted saying ‘Hell is other people’ was said to me by a lovely elderly & experienced GP once, when he was advising me how to cope with my very high blood pressure. He said if certain people are making your life a misery, then avoid them; if they are making you angry & bitter, then avoid them. I think that everything depends on the circumstances as well as the people.
Some people really do need you & by helping them one may find that, together, it will help you both. Some people are deliberately selfish & monopolise one’s time with no thought for anything but themselves, some thoroughly enjoy an argument & actually enjoy seeing others distressed & some people cannot sense when a person is feeling down &, if they could, wouldn’t care anyway!
My elderly Aunt has recently died at the age of 94. She was a pleasure to visit because although full of aches & pains she never grumbled. She took pleasure in our visits, loved hearing about the children & grandchildren & always remembered to send them some chocolate! By visiting her we made her feel good & she made us feel good! If only there could be more people like that!
I agree that it’s all about the attitude people have, rather than their circumstances.
I think this quote by Carlos Castaneda is very appropriate; “We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.”