There is one way to deal with this. If there are crabs among friends and colleagues, then such communication should be stopped as soon as possible. You don’t have to call them or write: «get out, bloodsucker, we don’t communicate anymore.» Just smoothly exit the communication and reduce it to zero. If such people are among parents, friends, relatives, then you need to agree that they do not say anything negative to you and do not complain. The main thing is to clearly distinguish requests for help from meaningless whining. From experience, I am sure that a small part will succeed. The rest will have hard work, difficult decisions or psychological stability. If you have such friends, relatives or family members, honestly and politely explain your thought once or twice. Explain that you are uncomfortable and you don’t know how to react. If nothing changes, they ignore you, continue bombarding you with dirt and negativity, then this means that they don’t care. They just satisfy their needs by communicating with you. Like, who, if not you, will listen to them? Stop this communication. It won’t lead to anything good.
«A person will be more willing to manipulate other people for the sake of getting support than he will agree to stand on his own feet to wipe his own ass»
Many will say that I am cruel and suggest cutting off communication with relatives and friends. Yes, that’s what I suggest, if there is nothing positive or neutral in this communication. Only you need to try to break not the whole connection, but the line of negative communication. But if it doesn’t work out, then it’s better not to communicate at all than to spoil your life. Or you can be among the lucky ones who will learn not to take everything personally and ignore the negative. I have seen many times how people spend years on painful or toxic communication. This is a step to nowhere. The question is very sensitive, because often people themselves do not understand that they are in a negative environment. No need to act hastily. Always try to help, but if everything is to no avail, then there’s nothing else for you to do except for either to endure or to avoid negative influence. Choose what is the lesser of evils for you.
Analyze your environment for energy, value, and needs. It sounds mercantile, but this is the only way to assess the situation soberly. You need to understand what this communication with a specific person is giving to you. For example, you communicate with someone because you have common interests, it charges you, you relax, get knowledge or give knowledge, and you like it. Write down a list of all the people with whom you communicate the most. Next to each in several columns, write: how long have you been communicating, what kind of need do you fulfill (why do you communicate with them, what do you like about it), what kind of energy do you get (how does it affect you), what have you learned or can learn, what topics were talked about last time. Then make a plan to strengthen and expand communication with good people. With whom you are comfortable communicating, they are ready to support you, share their experience and sincerely rejoice for your success. Try to make changes in your life to spend more time with positive people. Also make a plan to get rid of bad contacts. And do not forget that for someone you are also a close environment. Your behavior also affects other people’s lives. Let this influence be positive.
Skills and qualities
We carry out any activity with the help of competencies. Competence is a set of skills and the ability to use them to perform certain tasks. In simple terms, you have your own skills and qualities that help develop current and new skills. Which allow you to perform roles in different situations. In the analysis, our task is to understand what is the arsenal of skills and qualities at the moment. After all, remember that no one will give you an Iron Man costume. We have only ourselves. So, it doesn’t matter what you think about your skills, you need to analyze yourself for superpowers and growth points. You don’t need to focus on what you don’t know how to do, but you want to. Maybe you don’t need it. We’ll figure this out later. For those who think that they don’t know anything and can’t do anything, I’ll say right away: there are no people who can’t do anything. Up to the current age, you received different experiences, adopted other people’s attitudes and existed in this world. All people have the potential for development and degradation. You definitely have superpowers. You just don’t know about it yet or have never tried to find them. Until today, your skills have provided you with different functions for different roles. For example, driver, manager, parent, salesman, pilot, etc. All these are roles, and each needs its own skills. Looking ahead, we can say that life is a set of projects in which you need to play different roles. The path to your goals also consists of projects. If you haven’t reached the goal yet, then most likely you don’t know what projects it consists of, or you haven’t completed all the necessary projects. At this stage of the analysis, it is necessary to deal with what is there. To make it easier, start with the current activity. Write down the activity that you are doing now, that you like, and that you are doing well, in your opinion and the opinion of your friends, acquaintances and relatives. For each activity, write down the skills that you already use and which are needed for its execution. Write down what you know. If you don’t know what you like, then skip it. Fill it out later. Interview your friends and acquaintances. Ask them the question: «What do you think I’m doing well?». You can learn something new about yourself and very pleasant. If at this stage you already know the skills you want to develop, then write them down. It is important that they are dictated by the goal, and not because it is now in trend, or the son of a mom’s friend can do it, but you can’t. If you have encountered a problem and could not solve it, then write down what skills were not enough for this. Also write down your achievements at the moment with an explanation of what helped you do it. Forget about your emotions and opinions. Imagine that they put a gun to your temple and forced you to praise yourself. Write down everything you can praise yourself for. Any, even the smallest achievement.
«There are no irreplaceable, there are unique…»
The qualities you possess are no less important. They can be the seed from which you will grow the necessary skills. It is important to admit to yourself and describe your qualities as honestly as possible. What do you consider strong qualities and weak ones. This is a subjective assessment, but we need to start from something. Qualities help to form flexible skills or, as they are commonly called, «soft skills». Harvard scientists say that flexible skills account for 85% of a person’s success in the profession, rigid ones account for only 15%. Today, flexible skills are a trend, but we will talk about this in the chapter about training. Therefore, honestly describe your qualities. Without checking with a list of good and bad qualities. Just write what you consider to be the strong and weak qualities of your character. There is no purpose to praise or scold yourself. You need to take a picture of your character and understand what can already be used for growth, and what needs to be tightened. Correcting qualities is difficult. Most of them were formed in childhood, some more thanks to life experience. To change the qualities, sometimes you may need the help of a specialist. Most often, nothing needs to be changed, and the help of a career consultant puts everything in its place. But for now, just finish reading this book. Most likely, the next few chapters and a little consistency will solve your problems.
Mindset
I used to often hear that you are what you think. I don’t agree with that. You can think as much as you want, but you will never do it. In order to change something or decide on something, there must be a certain mindset. Mindset is a type or way of thinking. We can also say that this is a person’s worldview. In principle, it depends on him how and with whom you will move towards the goal, what will be the reaction and actions in case of difficulties and mistakes. Your confidence, attitude, courage and speed of change depend on it. You’re not what you think you are. You are what you do. To do the right thing, you need to put things in order in your way of thinking. To do this, you need to analyze your thoughts. The American psychologist Carol Dweck devoted a lot of work to the topic of mindset. She is an expert
