Our lives wander past so many other people, and their influence can lift us up or leave us feeling flat. Each day, week, and year that passes I see how much those around us impact our lives.
In the past year, as I’ve started my journey as a mother, I’ve been blessed to have a whole new group of amazing mama-friends step into my life and lift me up. I’ve also had some disappointments in other relationships that have gotten harder and hurtful. Our communities are valuable. Our relationships are transformative, but only if we allow ourselves to navigate their impact intentionally.
That’s why I feel inspired to share with you another excerpt from my book Inspired Action: Create More Purpose, Productivity, and Peace in Your Life. What follows is Chapter 39: Choose Your Influencers, which gives you strategies to handle and maximize your own energy through all the relationships and interactions in your life.
Choosing Your Influencers
Once, in a class on social media, the presenter said that if all you are getting in your Twitter or Facebook feed are updates on what people had for breakfast or FML(F*#$ my life) posts, then it’s not a problem with the tool; it’s a problem with the people you’re following. If you don’t like what you see, then change the channel. I remember laughing at the time and being grateful that my friends only very rarely post about their breakfast bagel.
Then a few years went by, and I began attending more personal- and professional-development events. I enjoyed the energy, got information that was immediately relevant to my life and business, and suddenly created a whole new network of positively motivated and passionate people. The people I have met span the globe from London to New Zealand and all across North America, and many of us have become Facebook friends to maintain our connection. When this first began to happen, it was like a positive thought revolution took place in my feed. I hadn’t realized how wonderfully connected and motivating people could be until I began surrounding myself with people who were also filled with joy, curiosity, and ambition. The change was amazing.
We’ve all had the experience of emotional influence or contamination. Positive and negative emotions spread so easily. For example, you call a friend just to say hi and walk unexpectedly into a misery fest. Prior to that call you were feeling rather upbeat, even cheerful, but by the time the call is over all you feel is drained. We all have bad times, sure, and none of us want to be fair-weather friends who disappear during the tough times. Nevertheless, have you noticed that some people always seem to have tough times? They surround themselves with problems, manifest them, and focus on them to the point where nothing good ever seems to happen. Or, if good things do happen, then the response is, “Well, it won’t last.” Ugh!
Negative Nellies, newscasters, and drama queens (regardless of gender), these are beautiful human beings who are stuck in very disempowering patterns. The problem is that they will continue to be stuck until they are ready to make a different choice. And in the meantime, they will persistently drain and infect everyone around them.
Cultivate Lilies, Get Rid of Leeches
If you recognize negative patterns in the people around you, then you have a choice to make. As psychiatrist Ned Hallowell says, “Cultivate lilies and get rid of leeches.” Invest in the positive relationships, grow your lilies in a beautiful field, and surround yourself with their wonderful fragrance.
Meanwhile, pull off the leeches and leave them back in their swamp where they prefer to wallow. It’s your choice where to put your attention and energy. That can include turning off the TV news, which is full of negative storytelling. And if some people in your life are living in leech land, then now might be the time to gently create more distance. Call these people less often, fill your social time with other commitments (preferably with your lilies), and create some emotional space around yourself by reducing or eliminating their influence.
Of course there are some relationships in which it’s much harder to create that space. Immediate family members and co-workers might be in full leech mode, and you don’t have the option to simply walk away. Perhaps you can create some space by limiting encounters, but these people are part of your journey and are not going anywhere soon. In these circumstances you need a strategy to help protect and manage your own emotional energy well and wisely.
Grounded, Centered, and Safe
The key to navigating encounters with people in leech mode is to handle your own energy differently. In order to ride through their storm, you might need a little advance preparation. The good news is that this preparation can take just 30 seconds to 2 minutes and can be done anywhere. What follows is a brief visualization exercise that can help you to immediately ground and center your own energy in your body, making you less easily influenced by others’ emotions or attitudes.
Find a quiet place, if possible, and take a few deep breaths. Imagine your body as the trunk of a great tree, with roots growing down from your feet and into the earth. Reaching down deep, spreading out wide, your roots are creating a strong and stable base beneath you. You can send any emotions or energy that’s not serving you in this moment down into the earth, knowing that Momma Earth will transform anything you send. Pause, and feel the energy of the earth flowing around your roots. Draw it up with your roots and send it throughout your whole body, from the tips of your toes to the tips of your fingers to the tip of your nose and everywhere in between. Feel the earth energy grounding you and holding you solidly and lovingly rooted to Mother Earth.
Next, imagine your energy rising up from your core, through your body, and out the top of your head to grow your branches. The branches reach up tall and span out wide from the top of your head toward the sky. Growing in every direction, they reach toward the sun, the moon, and the stars, whose vibrant energy shines down on your branches. Drink it in through your leaves, draw it into your branches, and bring that vivid, vibrant energy down into your body. Move it from the top of your head all the way down your body, arms, and legs to the tips of your toes.
Pause for a moment, breathe, and feel yourself grounded in place, connected to the earth, and centered in space connected to the sky. Know that you can maintain this connection and carry it with you wherever you go. Finally, since we anticipate that you are about to encounter a challenge, imagine that a clear, constantly flowing waterfall surrounds you. This waterfall can act as a filter that captures any negativity or harmful intentions and washes them down immediately to Mother Earth, who can transform and recycle them. Thus, the waterfall creates a boundary of safety around you and washes away that which does not serve you while still allowing any good energy to pass through. Imagine it less as a wall and more as a filter programmed to serve your highest intentions. Then, within yourself, find a space of compassionate strength, a knowing that any person who has leech-like qualities is on his or her own journey, for which you can feel compassion. Simultaneously you can remain strong in your own grounded energy and secure in your personal space.
A Grounding Practice
If you’ve done this visualization and find that you’re still feeling emotionally triggered when certain people are around, then it’s likely that a gift of learning is waiting for you there. Get curious. What are you trying to learn from this experience? What is the gift that will allow you to transform in this moment? If you’re still feeling triggered, then there’s still something there for you, and it will keep coming up until you’re ready to learn the lesson, gather the gift, and release this pattern for yourself. When you do, find a space of gratitude to this person who has been a teacher for you, and your entire relationship with him or her may change. He or she may become a new ally, or at least lose the power to trigger that negative emotion in you in the future.
This visualization makes an excellent daily morning meditation. I’ve discovered that I have a greater ability to control my mental focus and create even more joy in my life when I feel grounded and centered, and you never know who you’re going to encounter during the day. There’s nothing like being prepared from the outset.
Next Actions
- Take a moment to reflect on the relationships and influencers in your life. Who are your lilies and leeches? With whom would you like to spend more time? Who might be appropriate to give some more space? Start by identifying which relationships you want to cultivate, and take action to spend more time on them. Simply focusing on what you want may allow what you don’t want to drop away.
- Stop watching the TV news. This was one of my quickest leech-removing decisions. When I’m grounded and in the right mind space to learn about world events, then, very intentionally, I pull up an appropriate website, but filling my world with negative news while getting dressed in the morning was supremely disempowering for my day and even more troublesome to my dreams at night.
- Build a grounding habit. When in your day might it be helpful to get a bit more grounded? Early in the morning? When you first arrive at work? Before you walk into your home at night? Practicing grounding on a regular basis has many more benefits than simply handling challenging encounters with others. It can increase focus, decrease your own emotional volatility, and give you a greater sense of connection with the world around you. For more ideas about how to develop this practice as a habit, pick up a copy of Inspired Action and check out Chapter 14: Habits: The Power of Patterns and Chapter 35: Influence: Yourself and Others.
