How I Used Minimalism to Get Rid of Some Friends
There is more to being a minimalist than getting your house and car in order. Messy relationships can weigh you down just as much as a messy house.
Negative friends can rob you of your peace of mind, happiness, and your ability to move forward in life and achieve your goals. Have you ever heard the saying “Misery loves company?” Well, once your negative friends see that you are trying to change your life for the better, they will do everything in their power to drag you down.
My minimalist approach to relationships doesn’t mean slashing my friend group in half or snubbing new friendships because I don’t have room for anyone else. My approach does mean investing purposefully in relationships that will contribute meaningfully to the joy-filled life I am working so hard to build.
Two years ago, I wrote down the names of friends that were playing a role in my life. I assessed my friendships by simply asking myself how I was feeling after regularly interacting with some friends.
- I classified a friend as neutral if my emotional wellness has neither improved nor decreased.
- I classified a friend as supportive if I was feeling inspired, supported, lightened, or fed in some way.
- I classified a friend as toxic if I was feeling drained, depleted, and insignificant.
As a result, I decided to weld and polish my relationships only with my supportive friends. I decided to interact with my neutral friends once in a while. I decided to cut off my toxic friends. Why?
My toxic friends didn’t care about me. All they cared about was themselves, and they drained my energy, making sure that even their smallest needs were often met at my expense. A Sunday night, a toxic friend of mine called me, screaming that I needed to come around urgently. When I got there, I found out that she has broken a fingernail.
My toxic friends have done everything in their power to prevent me from reaching ambitious goals. Once they saw that I was actively taking steps to better myself, they became like crabs in a bucket trying to pull me back down.
All they could do was discourage me with statements like, “There are too many problems, I don’t think you will be able to overcome them.” Statements like this were encouraging me to stay in the predicament I was in so that I will never move forward in life.
Eliminating negative people from your life is a process, and a part of that process involves limiting the amount of power they have over your emotions, and that means understanding that when they are hurting you, they are not really seeing you.
Letting go of a toxic relationship can range from distancing yourself subtly to severing contact altogether, depending on the severity of the toxicity and its impact on you.
Removing yourself from a harmful relationship doesn’t make you a bad person; it means you’re strong. It takes incredible courage to stand up for yourself and vigilantly guard what you let in. You deserve to be treated with respect, and at the end of the day, only you can have the final say.
