March is the season of cleaning, organizing, and creating a new landscape for our lives in hopes of the coming season. It is a rebirth for us! It is the time we declutter our homes by clearing out outgrown clothing while complaining incessantly about growing children or waistlines. It is putting away throw blankets that we nestled into all winter long while watching our favorite T.V. shows. It may include cleaning out the ever-growing mass of clutter that has seeped into our garages in anticipation of a spring-cleaning.
Spring cleaning may look like the re-commitment for the 100th time to start walking in the mornings, stop eating Lil’ Debbie’s for breakfast, or it may be finally giving up those mommy jeans for something with a be-dazzled butt!
The offer that while your cleaning out your pantry
with drops of soaked in honey and the random pretzel
is that you consider “cleaning out” some of your
toxic relationships!
(Yeah, you instantly know whom I am speaking about!)
We all have them. Some are repairable relationships and some are not. It is up to you to know which is which. We all have had to struggle with relationships that have required bumps and bruises, but have come out being a closer association in the end. We speak of the ones that are not mendable-for-the-moment. In these types of affiliations, we find ourselves justifying our participation in them by labeling the glorified part we play in it….“the protector, the example, the nurturer, forgiver.” We set ourselves up to be something (a label) to validate our participation in these relationships.
But it has been said,
“toxic relationships are like emotional cancer.”
(Brad Paul)
Would you participate in having cancer if you weren’t diagnosed with it? When we decide to allow the toxic relationship in our lives, because we have already given ourselves permission to participate in “it”, we start to lose perspective on what behavior is acceptable and what is not okay! We take harsh and unfair criticism and allow it to seep into our belief system! We allow words and actions to be perpetrated upon us, which lessen who we are and what our worth is! We lower ourselves to allow “those people” to feel superior to us!
The bottom line is:
Consider your TRUE worth.
Disperse with the puffed up label you have given yourself to justify your participation in a destructive relationship!
Stop over estimating what you “may miss out on” if you reorganize the look of that relationship and start giving yourself more value.
After all, they aren’t going to do it, so give you permission to think of yourself with the TRUE value attached. And if all else fails, you have permission to always say, “Well, it’s their lost!
Quote for spring:
“If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. ” ~Nadine Stair
Oh how Smitten By LOVES River!
Learn more about her HERE | And read her Advice column HERE.
Comments
comments
Riv…your are nothing short of AMAZING! Thanks for your example and the reminder that I have value-xoxo
GREAT advice. When you value yourself and your time, you can free yourself from these relationships even if they are resistant to the change! It is so freeing.