These days, people are starting to realize the importance of things like de-cluttering and feng shui. It has become a ritual to rid our living spaces of mess and negative energy. While this is all well and good, how many of us have actually thought about de-cluttering our personal life? The fact of the matter is, the negative people in our lives are a million times more toxic than a little pile of old clothes!

Toxic people have a way of messing with our minds and making us think unhealthy thoughts. These so-called friends can keep us from achieving our goals and enjoying things in life. So how do we spot them? Well, read on to recognize your toxic friend!

The Overcompetitive Friend
We all know someone like this, the one who turns every little thing into a competition, whether it is how much money you make, what your man got you for Valentines day or even how many designer handbags you own. These kinds of friends have the ability to make you feel insecure and discontented with what you have in life. You’ll find yourself constantly fighting to “stay in the game” and becoming harder on yourself and the people around you. While a certain amount of competitiveness is a motivation, this kind of over competitiveness is destructive as it makes you focus too much on winning all the little battles that don’t even matter.

The Critical Friend
This type of friends, on the other hand, are hard on your self-esteem. They’re judgmental about many of the things you do and often question your abilities and intelligence. Sadly, most critical friends are hard to spot simply because they mask their unhelpful criticisms with carefully constructed words. You would often believe that the things they say are “for your own good” and, as a result, suffer from insecurities and self-doubt. Perhaps these friends do mean well, and they merely underestimated your abilities. Whatever it is, they prevent you from reaching your full potential by injecting fear of failure into your thoughts.

The Pessimistic Friend
Then there are the friends who do not aim any sort of negativity at you but unknowingly poison you with their gloomy aura. These people have a very depressing outlook on life. They live each day expecting the worst and are prone to looking on the bad side of things. While everyone has the freedom to think and see the world the way they want to, spending too much time with a pessimistic person would actually open up your eyes to the dark side. They would be unknowingly pointing out dark clouds when you see none, thus ruining perfectly pleasant experiences for you!

The Manipulative Friend
And finally, we have the little puppet master, the most dangerous type of friend out of the four. These friends know just what to say and do to get as much as they can out of you, whether it’s in terms of time, money or effort. So how can you tell whether you’re being taken advantage of? The best you can do is try to look at the situation objectively and see if the friendship is equal on both sides. You often treat her to lunches, does she do the same for you? You answer her calls immediately whenever she needs you, is she there for you as well? Parasitic friends often leave us feeling under appreciated and emotionally drained.

While people, unlike junk, are not as easily thrown out, it is still important to rid ourselves of these negative influences. For extreme cases with drastically unhealthy friends, withdrawal may very well be the best course of action. It is always sad when a friendship ends but ultimately, if a person brings much more harm than good into your life, it is the best thing for you to let go and move on.

There are friendships, however, that can still be salvaged. Perhaps this can be done by confronting the friend about their critical words and manipulative actions or jokingly point out their unusual pessimism in the hopes that realization would bring about change.

At the end of the day, it all boils down to self-awareness. If you are able to keep your mind a clear and positive place, you’d be able to keep these negative influences at bay. When you have confidence in yourself and believe in your abilities, all the negativity in the world would not be able to bring you down!

Possible related posts...

• Do Nice Guys Really Finish Last?
• Affordable Or Branded? Which Would You Choose?
• Garnier Turbolight Oil Control Facial Scrub For Men
• Time To Add The “B” Word In Your Life
• A Chronicle Worth Watching?