Today I am going to talk about surrounding yourself with success. This means EVERYTHING from the people you hang out with, to the items you hang on your wall, to the TV you watch, to the music you listen to, EVERYTHING. The word surround means “to enclose on all sides; encompass.” So, let’s really surround ourselves with success.
People
“You are the company you keep.” We’ve all heard that saying before. For those of you reading this that are being surrounded, or rather suffocated, by negative people in your life, don’t just walk away from them, RUN! When you hang out with negative people one of two things has to happen. Either you bring them up to your level, or they drop you down to theirs. If you meet them somewhere in-between, you’re still losing as you weren’t as high as you were before interacting with them. With that said, how do we know if someone is good or bad for us? It’s simple; do they make you feel good or bad when interacting with them? Do they lift you up or put you down? Do they encourage your dreams or crush them? If it’s the latter, then I by all means encourage you to stop allowing them to influence your life.
We’re all here for only a short time. Why not surround ourselves with people who love and encourage us? Here’s an easy exercise that I got from Jack Canfield’s book The Success Principles, that will help you find out who is beneficial and who is detrimental to your life. Grab a pen and paper and write out everyone’s name that you interact with. Then next to each person’s name write a plus sign (+) or minus sign (–) depending on whether or not you feel the person is good or bad for your life. By the way, there are some people in our lives who are good one day and bad the next. As Dr. Fleet of the Concept-Therapy Institute would say, some people are gods on one day and devils the next. Now that you have your list, how do you separate yourself from the bad?
1. You can begin to look for the good in the bad people you listed and only focus on their good. What this does is it sends out a positive vibration from your brain to theirs and over time the person will respond in kind. As Jesus said, “Love your enemies; love those that hate you.” Or as Dr. Fleet says in his book, Rays of the Dawn, “The emotion of love is an electromanifestation from the brain that is stronger than that of hatred. Hence it overcomes hate. When a soul is animated with love, it radiates the warmth of its feeling, and it blesses and inspires whoever it contacts. And the object of its beneficence will reflect back the same ennobling influence.”So start looking for the good in those that you hate. It’s there. It’s just buried under a lot of garbage. If you really look, you’ll find it. The same spiritual force that flows through you flows through them and it is what connects us all.
You can also do my: “10 Things I Like About” exercise where you list 10 qualities you like about someone and focus on those qualities for a minute or two every day. Overtime the positive vibrations you are sending out will be received by the negative person, and they will become what you are focusing on.
2. Some people are so engrossed in the negative phase of life that they have no desire to do good. If you are surrounded by people like this then by all means stop hanging out with them immediately. Decide right now what kind of people you would like to hang out with, make a list of them (we all have a few in our lives already), and begin spending more time with them. If you have no friends then you can start by picking up books by some great authors; Dr. Fleet, Napoleon Hill, Jack Canfield, Louise Hay, etc. and start immersing yourself with good right now.
When those negative people come around you can do one of two things; 1) Invite them to whatever positive event you are going to (most likely they won’t want to do it). Or 2) tell them you are busy as you are going to go do something positive. After a few phone calls those people will get the hint.
What if that negative someone is really close to you such an abusive husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, or wife? If they cannot treat you with the love and dignity you deserve, then by all means leave them. You are entitled to happiness and no person has the right to take that from you. In fact, I venture to say that no one can take that from you unless you let them. It’s your choice who you do and don’t spend your time with. Just because someone has been in your life up until now does not mean they have to be in your life forever. If you have a horrible parent, brother, sister, friend, cousin, uncle, whoever, that is having a negative influence on you, then by all means get away from them.
I’ll give you a better example (I might have gotten this from Jack Canfield as well). If some toxic waste happened to spill right next to where you were sitting, would you continue sitting by it? Of course not. You know that it’s bad for your body and life so you would immediately get away from it. The same principle applies to toxic people. There’s one other thing I would like to talk about in regard to people. Some people might no longer have toxic people in their life but still have the memories of what those toxic people did to them constantly replaying in their heads. If this is happening to you, I urge you to start forgiving those people so you can go on with being your beautiful self.
When you are constantly replaying negative images in your head it does a number of things; 1) It transmits to the Universe/Divine Intelligence/God, that you would like to see more of this in your life. 2) Through the Law of Attraction, you are going to attract more negative experiences based on the vibration you are in. “As you sow, so shall you reap”. 3) It’s going to have an adverse effect on your body as you are constantly putting negative thoughts into it. There is a connection between the mind and body. Just like when you feed it harmful foods, it has a harmful effect. The same goes for harmful thoughts.
So how do you forgive and let go? There are a few things you can do; 1) You can go through the steps to forgiving or as Jack Canfield likes to call it “The Total Truth Process”. I like to visualize the other person sitting next to me and I go ahead and tell them how what they did made me angry, afraid, hurt, sad, what responsibility I had in this situation, how I forgive them, and anything I am thankful for. If there’s any other emotions I didn’t list that you have, feel free to include them in there such as guilty, hateful, and so on. I conclude by saying “I now forgive you and allow us both to move forward in light and love”. Now does this always work? Usually it is enough.
There is one other thing that I like to do that is just as powerful if not more powerful. I got it from Dr. Peter Goldman, DC (for San Fran residents) and Dr. Mike Fitzgerald, DC (for New Jersey residents), two incredible Concept-Therapy teachers. The method was created by Dr. Fleet who I mentioned before. I lie down, relax, and allow myself to revisit the event. Then I say, “That was me then. I take 100% responsibility for that. I am no longer that person.” When I say ”I take 100% responsibility”, I mean I take 100% responsibility for how I felt at that time. I am then going to release it so it will no longer affect me. Then, with the hammer of my will (I actually envision a hammer), I shatter the negative image of what happened. I then replace that negative image with something more positive such as “I am strong”, “I am confident”, or I simply replace the image with a new one of how I would have liked everything to go. By replacing that old image with a new one, it allows my mind to see how I could handle a similar event in the future and how I should have handled that previous one. By doing this exercise, you are literally ridding yourself of old negative concepts and replacing them with new positive ones.
What You See
Are the images you see positive or negative? When you come home is your house a mess or is everything organized and clean? When you look at yourself do you look like hell or do you look like a success? When you watch TV or movies, are they uplifting or detrimental?
Home
How does your home look? It is clean and well-kept? Does it radiate a good energy? When you come home and everything is in order, it keeps you in a positive vibration and allows the flow of good to continue in your life. It’s so much nicer to sit in a clean place then a dirty one. By simply allocating a few minutes a day or week to cleaning, it can make a big deal in your life.
Something that I like to do for my home and office is to put up positive images and writings for my life. These can be anything from pictures that one of my little cousins made me, to pictures of things I would like to see manifested, to quotes that remind me of success. As I type this there are two sticky notes displayed on my computer. One says, “Tony IS the Best in the World!” and was made for me by 8 year old cousin. The other says “Compared to the seed that he planted in the ground, he will find that which he gets back is a hundred-fold, even more.” & “The more you plant, the more you reap.”
One of the stickies reminds me of how awesome I am and always puts me into a good mood whenever I think of my little cousin and the other reminds me of the importance of tithing. By sowing out good into life, I can expect a like reward.
Television!
I put an exclamation point on television because so MANY people out there are watching SO much TV. The average American spends something like five to six hours a day in front of their TV. I don’t have a problem with watching TV, but I do want to ask, what kind of TV are you watching? Are you watching comedies and uplifting shows that make you feel good? Or are you watching the news all-day and having your mind bombarded with negative images? For those that sit around watching the news all-day, if I could urge you to quit one habit for a month, that would be it. All you’re doing is filling your mind with images of lack, poverty, fear, and in a lot of instances, death. Why would you want to put this into your head?
Take that time that you put into the news and focus on reading, exercising, or doing something positive for your life. I know a lot of you will say “Well I have to know what’s going on in the world”. If that is the case, watch a few small segments or pick up the newspaper. By picking up the newspaper you can quickly find out everything by scanning the front-page.
You!
When you look at yourself, do you radiate good health, vitality, and energy? Or do you look like you just woke-up or need to sleep? Take some time to cultivate your personal appearance. It’s so important for a variety of reasons. One, when you look good, you often feel good. If you look in the mirror and like what you see, it’s going to put you into a good mood and encourage you to do more. Two, it’s said that when meeting someone for the first time, the other person makes up their impression about you within the first 10 seconds of meeting you. Wouldn’t you want that to be a good impression? Three, if you’re reading this and single, it’s always easier to meet someone new when you look and feel good.
And on that note, I am single and good looking so it is time for me to head out for the weekend. When I get back I’ll do part two which focuses on what you hear, think, and feel.
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