The Complete Guide For How To Focus On Yourself (Part 6)
The relationship with oneself to dealing with toxic people.
This is part six in a seven-part series on how to focus on yourself. Subscribe to get the final post sent to your inbox.
Part 7: Relationships
People are naturally social creatures. It is vital to surround yourself with like-minded people in your community.
There are three main types of relationships besides romantic relationships. While erotic, romantic, and mania love receive the most attention from society, there are different types of non-romantic love that you can focus on. When you pay less attention to romantic love and instead work to invest in yourself, you will become the person you always wanted to become. You will meet others who think and share the same values as you along your transformational journey.
Relationship With Oneself
It is essential to have a relationship as you focus and work on yourself in your relationship with yourself. This is called Philautia, or self-love. You need to know yourself by understanding your passions, strengths, and weaknesses. If you are always hating yourself, then you will never learn self-love. You are your own worst enemy. You can also be your own best friend. Once you can love yourself, you can begin to accept yourself despite all of your flaws. When you fully accept yourself and love yourself for who you are, you can work to succeed at reaching your life goals.
Family
Familial love is the love of family. Family is essential in the life of singles. While no one has a perfect family, you can work to get along with the family you do have in your life. You could get together with your family once a week for dinner if they live nearby. Or, you could phone or video call with your family members to keep current with their lives.
Friendship
Philia is the love of friendship. You can start to spend more time with your friends. Rather than just making small talk with your friends, you can work to begin to get to know your friends on a deeper level by asking questions. Small talk is just about the weather, what they do, and what they may think about this, from sports to politics. However, in a quality friendship, you will be able to talk about issues and topics that are important to you.
Types of Friends
1. Best Friend
Everyone wants a best friend. Yet it is tough to turn a friend into a best friend because a few factors will contribute to making a best friend: time, mutual interests, shared values, getting along with each other, and talking to each other regularly. If you have a best friend, consider yourself blessed.
2. Friends
The second type of friend is the friends you regularly hang out with. You see these friends often enough that you know their names, have had a conversation with them, and know enough about them to start a conversation with them. These friends may invite you out to do something or go to a party because you are on a first-name basis. You would do the same with your friends. However, you will not have deep or meaningful conversations like you would have with your best friend.
3. Acquaintances
Acquaintances are casual friends. These are people whom you may only see every once in a while. You may see them out at your favorite bar, at church, or at the gym. You may know their first names and have had a few conversations with them. However, you don’t know or see them as consistently as your friends.
4. Colleagues
Your work friends, or colleagues, are another type of friends you may have. This may not apply to you, depending on how much you separate your professional life from your regular life. However, you still have to know your colleagues and get along with them well enough to keep the relationship from getting uncomfortable at your workplace. You do this because you want to please your boss and receive your paycheck, but you also recognize that if you are consistently late, your colleagues must pick up and do extra work that you were responsible for.
5. “Friends” And “Connections”
In the age of social media, you have “friends” and “connections” on many different platforms. They may be called other things: “friends,” “followers,” or “connections.” However, how many have you met and talked to of the hundreds, thousands, or millions of friends/connections/followers you may have? Those people are not your friends in real life. They are just the digital identity or fake digital identity of someone. The person could not even be natural.
Toxic Friends and Negative People
A toxic friend or a negative person can be a best friend, a friend, an acquaintance, or a colleague at work. These types of people are leeches in your life. They will take away your time, energy, and strength. Your time, energy, and knowing your strengths will make you successful in life. Toxic people will prevent you from achieving success by making you feel bad about yourself, lowering your self-confidence, and will keep you in a state of negative thinking. Toxic friends and negative people suck out all of the positivity and energy from your life. It would help if you had that positivity and energy to work to achieve your goals. There are many different types of toxic people, but here are three main ones to be aware of as you navigate people.
The Victim
The first toxic person to watch out for is the victim. The person who plays the victim. The victim is often passive-aggressive and blames others when something goes wrong rather than taking responsibility for their actions.
The Bully
The second type of toxic person is the bully. A bully could be a friend, coworker, or family member who despises uncertainty while having an exaggerated sense of responsibility. Bullies like to control things, especially people in their lives. Some signs that someone is a bully is that they take advantage of you without giving anything in return. They do this by asking people for favors and soliciting free advice. A bully can also yell or be very harsh with you without letting your finish your thought or sentence by interrupting you. They must always have the final word. Bullies love to scrutinize and micromanage every aspect of someone’s life because they live at the expense of other people.
The Gossiper
The third type of toxic person to be wary of is the gossiper. A gossiper loves being the center of attention. They love knowing what everyone is up to. A gossiper may be friends with you so they can gossip about you behind your back. Gossipers also live off of drama and love nothing better than creating drama to be the center of attention. It can be tiresome to have a gossiper as a friend. That is why they are toxic, plus you never know if they will tell people something that you want to remain a secret or private.
Dealing With Toxic People
It is best to mitigate the toxic people in your life. You can identify the toxic people among your coworkers, friends, and family. You must decide if you want to limit your interaction with a toxic person who completely cut them out of your life. The bottom line is that many poisonous people will prevent you from reaching your full potential.
This is the end of the sixth post of a seven-part series on how to focus on yourself. If you want to receive the following posts in your inbox, subscribe to Secure Single’s Subtack.
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