Our associations impact us in unexpected ways. We tend to absorb qualities from our friends. Both good and bad. They happen arbitrarily and we often don’t even realize it.
Quality social connections help us live longer, stay healthier and be happier. Bad connections make us judgemental and unhappy.
Here are 4 types of people worth purging from your life.
Stay Away From People Who Want To Joke About Others But Can’t Take One
There’s nothing worse than someone who dishes it out to everyone but gets easily offended when someone makes even a small joke about them.
The ability to laugh at yourself is highly underrated. It’s humility sprinkled with humor.
I love hanging out with such people. They are hilarious, open, and honest. They aren’t obsessed with being right, they don’t pretend to be someone else, and often will jokingly keep you in check if you make stuff up or be unreasonable.
If you meet someone who can laugh at themselves, get their phone number. Invite them to hang out.
Stay Away From People Who Treat Others Badly
Quality friends don’t treat people like Pokemon cards, coveting certain ones and disregarding others based on their value.
When I was an undergrad, there was this group of guys who treated their group as a high-profile organization. They would be mean to everyone else who wasn’t them. They would be absolutely horrible to those who wanted to join them. It was like newcomers needed to endure gruesome humiliation before being accepted.
I was friends with them for a while but after being a passive observer of what they were doing, I had a broader reckoning that I needed to clean up my life. I was bonding with unsavory people. I was letting anyone into my life without screening their value systems. It was hurting my character.
Most of us need more friendships than we currently have. Yet we also need to ensure that they have some baseline qualities that we admire.
Choose to associate with people who have something in their character that inspires you.
Choose to associate with people who have an infectious and authentic smile that makes others feel warm and welcome.
Stay Away From People Who Manipulate Others To Satisfy Their Needs
When I was 19, A friend from grade school invited me to an out-of-state trip with some of his friends and his neighbor. I had never traveled outside my home state without my parents so I was excited about the experience.
The neighbor had a weird way of doing things. He always had problems with plans we made if they didn’t fulfill his requirements. For example, there was a restaurant serving Indo-Chinese that the rest of the boys and I were excited about going to. The neighbor stonewalled our plans and almost coerced us into going to another place of his choice.
You can imagine how that trip went for us.
I’ve noticed this happen several times later in my lifetime, sometimes with housemates, and even in the workplace. There’s this one person senior engineer who works in my group. He tries to avoid everyone as much as he can, which is fine. Then one day, he asked me to join him for lunch. I was surprised.
As we chatted, I started thinking that he is a nice person and I had it all wrong. An hour later, he requested for my help with something, and I obliged. But the next day, we were back to being strangers. This happened several times until I understood what was happening.
My suggestion would be to spend your time with people who don’t see the world through the prism of personal advancement.
They aren’t worth your time.
Stay Away From People Who Bash
When I was in school, a few of my friends spent the majority of their time bashing people that weren’t around. They did this in a mean-spirited way with the intention of completely disregarding everything good about the person they were talking about.
I am guilty here as I would often get caught up in it. I came to realize these friends were making me more judgemental. I started to wonder what was being said in my absence.
Character assassination is a very enjoyable pastime for those who are trying to compensate for their inadequacies. Many of these people would rather put other people down rather than work on improving themselves.
It’s sickening.
I should have stopped being friends with these people much sooner than I did but I’m glad that it eventually happened. Otherwise, I’m pretty certain that I would have hated hanging out with people.
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Recapping for memory
We need friends and strong social connections. It’s ingrained in us.
It’s true that some of our close friends might hurt us along the way in unexpected ways. It’s our responsibility to identify people who are worthy of that risk.
Stay away from people if they:
- Bash others in their absence but are goody-good to them in their presence.
- Coerce or manipulate others for their personal gains.
- Are rude and disrespectful towards others.
- Can’t take a joke but are more than happy to poke fun at others.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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Photo credit: Matheus Ferrero on Unsplash