I have come across the very accepted idea relating to success that in order to maintain and nurture positive thinking look closely at who you associate with because this affects your own positive thinking. While this is, indeed, true, that you can be and are affected by negativity in your midst I must add my own experience with this. While I completely agree that you can be and are influenced by those around you including the popular idea “You are the five people you spend the most time with” in my experience the biggest influence is how much time you spend with your own heart, with God and in truth. I find that the more I extend love to my thoughts the more positive everyone around me becomes. Because I am extending love to myself it follows naturally that I can more easily extend love to others. As I extend love my self and others the more likely they are to feel safe and free to be their true selves and that leads immediately to a more positive outlook. As I love myself I can more easily listen to the guidance of my own heart. In this way I live more fully in other qualities of love like trust, strength, peace, joy and welcome. Everybody benefits when love is shared in all it’s colors and qualities.
Loving thy neighbor is easy when you already love yourself.
It used to really annoy me when I would hear the regularly shared advice in various success trainings to notice who is positive and who is negative in your midst and quit spending time with the negative people. The reason this suggestion runs amok is that you pretty quickly discover one of two things. Either you are the one who is negative and if the advice is “quit spending time with the one who is negative” you feel trapped and hopeless. Or, you discover that the negativity is coming from someone very close to you, a spouse, your boss, your child or your best friend. It is a big deal to even begin to notice your own thoughts and noticing who you are around is a great first step. Becoming aware of your thoughts without fleeing or panicking is another great step along the path of learning not to fear your self. I have found that extending love helps everyone. And since I am already connected to others in various ways what I do to myself automatically affects them. Extending love to your thoughts and fears is a great way to actually practice “love thy neighbor as thyself” without having to move if you find yourself next door to someone determined to make your life if not miserable, then limited or unpleasant. And since this may be the ego’s main gig, to make you notice it’s limiting influence enough to move into that larger, truer space of LOVE then by extending love to your ego thoughts you are, indeed, loving your closest neighbor as yourself. Because it is your self.
