Now I have preached this message a lot to plenty of people, and the most common problem I run into is this: Paranoia. Do not take this message to mean that you need to read into every single thing that people do wrong in your life. Focus more on the positive people in your life. Do not overlook the people in your life that want the best for you because there will be those people. There will be people who genuinely care about you and want to see you succeed above anything else. On the other hand, there will always be people in your life that do not want to see you succeed.
For a lot of people, the people in your life that will bring you down or want to see you fail will feel that way because you remind them of their own failures. Whenever you push yourself to be better and you get out of your comfort zone to start making the proper changes in your life it will stand out to everybody who is not doing that in their own lives. A common excuse that people give themselves when they are not everything that they want to be is that they are a victim and that the world is so far against them that it would be practically impossible for them to rise above it. So when you start to rise above your own challenges, your own failures, your own adversities then you are just proving that their excuse is bull. So they can either be inspired by you and rise above your level in their own lives or they can tear you back down and bring you to their level. The ladder of those two requires much less work so you will find in your life a lot of people that want to tear you down rather than rising to the occasion.
The most important thing to remember is that these attempts to tear you down are not about you. If someone is tearing you down when you are working on being the best version of yourself then that is about them. Clearly, you are not doing anything wrong, although people will tell you that you are. A lot of times when you start to work out people will call you vain. When you start to take time for yourself people will call you selfish. When you focus on loving yourself and protecting your peace and bettering yourself people will say that you only care about yourself. That is just not true. Taking care of yourself is just common sense, and let me tell you something: If you do not take care of yourself first, you will certainly not be able to take care of anybody else. You can not pour out from an empty glass.
If you do not focus on protecting your peace, if you do not focus on being better than you could easily become the person who is tearing others down and starting the cycle all over again. So focus on your goals and stop listening to the haters around you. Remember, it is not about you.
It all starts with you.
