Part Two: Realizations about those around you.
Self evaluation should have been the main take away from part one. Now we move onto to the type of people you will meet on your journey and just how to handle each encounter. This is life. People will screw you over. You will fight with family and friends. You will blame new people for things that old people in your life did. You will lose friends, that you thought would always be there. You will learn that everyone has a past and demons that have failed to tame. You will cry, and laugh and you will most definitely embarrass yourself. But then, you will come to the moment where none of that matters and you see that everything happens for a reason and every person you met along the way challenged you to be the best version of yourself.
1. Friendships just aren't friendships anymore.
Your friends become your family. You rely on each other to fill the positions of your nuclear family while you are away from home. Don't take your friends for granted. Support your friends, and their dreams. Adult friendships require time and effort. However, the company you keep does have an impact and influence on your choices, so chose your friends wisely. Less is more, be picky.
Love those who will love you when you have nothing to offer but your company.
2. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone you meet is your friend.
It's hard to think that everyone you run into life will not have your best interests in mind. The colloquial phrase "dog eat dog world," isn't taken as seriously as it should be. People will do whatever it takes to get themselves to the top, do not be fooled they will not reach down to help you up. People will only love you as long as you fit in their box. A person playing a role will eventually forget their act. Be patient and watch closely. Stay away from people who can't take responsibility for their actions and who make you feel bad for being angry at them when they do wrong.
3. THE SECRET AND POWER OF LISTENING
Open your ears by closing your mouth. You will never learn from the people around you, if you aren't actively listening to the things the say, nor will you be able to teach them anything. You can’t connect, communicate or influence without listening. We too often find ourselves listening to reply, rather than listening to understand. Communication is not always about turning the gears in your brain so that you always have a well-prepared response. Everyone you meet will teach you a lesson, you are the decisive element in whether or not you grasp their purpose in your life. Many people allow full disclosure when it comes to their intentions, but we miss them every time because we fail to open our ears by closing our mouth's.
4. You will find that people have opinions about YOUR decisions, opinions that you never asked for.
Don't take it personally. People's behavior toward you is a reflection of their relationship with themselves. People will often project the limitations they have put on themselves onto you. Resist. The cost of not following your heart is the pain of the regret you will feel every day. Everyone will not understand where you are going or how you will get there.
5. Other people have bad days and hurt feelings too.
Remember when I told you that you would learn the world doesn't revolve around you? I really meant that. Your job is not to judge. your job is not tot figure out if someone deserves something. Your job is to lift the fallen, to restore the broken, and heal the hurting. You never know what someone is going through. Don't get caught up in trying to diagnose what's wrong with someone. Goethe once said, "If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat them as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of.
6. Stop labeling others.
7. People are not homes.
People are not homes and you cannot turn them into homes. Learn from my many failed attempts. People are ever changing, and they will run off with everything you worked so hard to put inside them. They aren’t some empty shell of existence waiting for you to finally come home either. They shouldn’t be a holding place for our exhausted selves to come to on occasion. You really can’t make homes out of human beings because we are all moving and impermanent. Maybe sometimes we move in the same direction for a period of time. Maybe sometimes we stop for a vacation getaway together. Maybe some lives intersect only on occasion and we should be grateful for those encounters.
8. People around you teach you how to always be better than you are.
Your friends and family will challenge and test to your wit's end. This is simply because they have seen you at your highest. They know what you are capable of. So even if you can't see it yourself, they can. And they'll push you to be that person.
9. Learn from difficult people and let them be.
If you have recurring issues with difficult people, know that they’re there to help you, to guide you to a better place. Open yourself to their messages. Take responsibility for your part in the drama. When you understand the messages and act on them, you’ll have no need for walls. You’ll stop attracting the difficult people and situations. The negative people that you will run into, they are there for a reason. Don't allow what others chose to do to you, change you. That will be their karma, not your's. Let that energy go and keep shining.
10. People are not to be defined by a label.
Categorical labeling is a tool that humans use to resolve the complexity of the environments we perceive. Like so many human faculties, it's adaptive but it also contributes to some of the deepest problems that face our species. Labels shape more than our perception of color; they also change how we perceive people. it's important to recognize that the people we label as "black," "white," "rich," poor," smart," and "simple," seem blacker, whiter, richer, poorer, smarter, and simpler merely because we've labeled them so.
