choose your surroundings

I want you to think about something. How often have you asked yourself “What’s wrong with me?” and how often does the question “What’s wrong with my surroundings?” come up?

Often when we are confronted with some sort of unhappiness in our life, we try to change everything about ourselves, our mindset, our routine, our appearance and hope for the better… but something is still off.

Because it’s often not you yourself that’s causing this negative emotion, but it’s the moment you step into your workplace that’s frustrating you, it could be the people you talk to or relationships that are a simple red flag.

No matter how hard you try to improve yourself, with the wrong surroundings a sustainable improvement is not guaranteed. We are influenced by what’s around us.

Good thing we are not always destined to stay in toxic environments.

Surround yourself with people that share similar life philosophies as you, someone you can learn from and evolve, someone who supports you and accepts you but is also not afraid to be honest with you and show you where you could be wrong, but also help you find solutions and not only critisice you.

You are not doomed to work forever for one single employer, if your workplace makes you feel worse each day and your professional achievements are not being recognized while someone else gets to profit from your energy you put into that place, then you would still have the option to apply for another job where your efforts might be rather appreciated.

Same goes for your efforts you put into friendships, romantic relationships and family. If those have repeatedly been taken for granted then why would you continue to show up if those people wouldn’t reciprocate. Relationships of all sorts should be based on mutual respect. No need to run after anyone, no need to compromise your emotional needs, no need to let someone disrespect you.

Your surroundings make you.

Change is difficult and we are all creatures of habit. But when constant unhappiness, disappointment, judgement becomes a habit we normalize everything that is in fact not normal. We keep bad company around us because in the end it’s still company and we are afraid of ending up lonely if we cut it out. We keep bad jobs because we are acquainted with the frustration and it still pays the bills, we fear the new employer could be even worse and we would face harm to us that we haven’t get to know yet.

I don’t want to say I am smarter than that and have such strong character that I have never dealt with this matter. I did go through these situations over and over again. But let me tell you, with each loss I had, I had even a bigger win.

So next time before you start picking on every little thing about yourself, start with considering if what is around could be the actual villain. It hurts, it’s uncomfortable, but if you keep going after your needs and start pleasing you all that pain in this (hopefully short) time will pay off.