Do you have a toxic person in your life? Motivational speaker Jim Rohn famously said that you’re the product of the five people with whom you spend the most time. If you allow even one of those five people to be toxic in their relationship with you, you’ll soon find out how capable he or she is of holding you back from obtaining your life goals.
According to a Ladders article about toxic people, recent research from Friedrich Schiller University in Germany shows just how serious toxic people are. “The study found that exposure to stimuli that cause strong negative emotions, the same kind of exposure you get when dealing with toxic people, caused subjects’ brains to have a massive stress response.”
If you allow even one of those five people to be toxic in their relationship with you, you’ll soon find out how capable he or she is of holding you back from obtaining your life goals.
The article notes, “Whether it’s negativity, cruelty, the victim syndrome, or just plain craziness, toxic people drive your brain into a stressed-out state that should be avoided at all costs.”
The impact of toxic people
In our book Time To Get Real! we ask you to consider any negative or toxic relationships that you need to work on or move away from. It’s important to recognize that relationships can hinder or help an individual’s progress toward his or her best life. Negative or toxic relationships poison the efforts of an individual from moving in a positive direction.
Brian was a good guy who found he was constantly dealing with criticism from his older brother, Michael. Brian would periodically approach Michael for advice on various issues impacting his life. Michael consistently found negative aspects in Brian’s decision-making or behavior. He did not reinforce or applaud Brian’s positive behavior or decisions. He dwelled on the negative. This really bothered Brian. What should he do? What would you do?
In this instance and in many others that you can think of, we have an individual attempting to move forward in their life but hitting a roadblock in the form of a negative or toxic relationship. Whether it’s a friend, family member, boss, or spouse doesn’t matter. What matters is that this frustration in the relationship makes you feel negative, non-trusting of the individual, and concerned that you cannot share your true feelings or innermost thoughts.
You can seek the advice and help of one of your positive key relationships. You can seek guidance from a mentor or coach. Living with a negative or toxic relationship should not be an option.
Avoiding Toxic People
Just as a positive key relationship can help you move ahead to your best life, a negative or toxic relationship can prevent you from making progress. Refuse to live with a relationship that makes you feel bad, turns you off, creates negative energy and stress for you, and doesn’t help move you along to your best life. You can seek the advice and help of one of your positive key relationships. You can seek guidance from a mentor or coach. Living with a negative or toxic relationship should not be an option.
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We recommend that in addition to reading our book Time To Get Real! and working through the Life and Career Planning Model© that it provides, consider some amount of personal coaching that can help you to discern and activate your life’s vision and move you toward the best life and career that you deserve. All Life and Career Planning LLC coaches are experienced and certified in the Life and Career Planning Model© and serve as your accountability partner as you read each chapter of the book and capture your thoughts in the interactive exercises. To inquire about working with a coach, click here.
Source: Bradberry, Travis, 2019, ’10 toxic people you should avoid like the plague’, The Ladders, May 16