So often, people—myself included—complain about who they hang around. It can stem from the casual conversation, the differences between or just the general attitude surrounding everything. In a nutshell, the friend just doesn’t have the proper environment that the other person needs to live happily. What if the other person is feeling the exact same way and you don’t even know it yet? Sometimes it’s difficult to understand that the things we read, listen to, talk about and even the people we spend time with can greatly affect our mindset and overall personality.

Even though the topic may appear simple, there seems to always be a struggle with the honest truth lying beneath it. When a person is happy, he or she tends to read uplifting topics, listen to cheerful music and be with friends that keep them in a good mood with a proper attitude. However much changes when the person is sad. The friends turn to negative people with bad attitudes, the music is heart breaking and the reading topics are a bit more depressing. From here, it seems to be an issue of which is right or wrong. The answer is neither. Obviously, we all keep people around for certain purposes. It’s just in our nature. As humans we need to have a bit of everything in our lives to be content. That means having the incredibly positive friend to keep you uplifted, the negative friend for when you need to know that not everything is great all the time or the brutally honest friend that tells you to stop whining and figure it out. I’m sure you just placed all of your friends in each category.

More about human nature. Sherrie Carter, Psy.D. wrote an article entitled, “Emotions Are Contagious- Choose Your Company Wisely” for "Psychology Today" In the article, Carter talked about the general common ground between people who are around each other and the similarities in emotions. In the beginning she states, “While we’re busy focusing on the emotional states of others, we usually don’t pay much attention to… our emotional reactions to these social encounters.” She finishes up the article by going deeper into the connections of emotions to people and the blend of personalities to further prove the point at hand. The fact of the matter is just this: we as humans have a say in the environment we spend time in. Whether that be a good or a bad thing is entirely up to us.

So now that other people’s effect on us is handled and understood, what about our effect on other people? What kind of environment do we keep? Don’t we want to be the type of people that keep a general environment of love and support to all of our peers? Don’t I want to be the friend that can always be trusted with anything? Think about it. The environment that you spend your time in will ultimately determine the environment you keep.