The Five Things I Learned Last Week

1) Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me

How can we conceivably tell friend from false friend from foe? There are times we might need to end a friendship because the friendship is more negative than positive. Friends hold great influence over us. They can entice us into activities that we may never have tried before. They encourage us to be ourselves and they support us through rough times.

However, when someone who influences us becomes spiteful and tries to influence us in negative ways, what are we to do? Should we ignore it? On some occurrences I say yes. Part of friendship is recognizing a person's bad habits and negative traits and accepting them.

But when is a negative trait nothing more than manipulation? When someone tries to manipulate our viewpoint of someone or something for they're own benefit or unknown reasons, can the damage it does to the "friendship" be fixed? On some occurrences I say no.

Everyone knows the maxim, "if they act this way, they were not truly your friends." But the result of losing a "Friend" regardless of the why is very hurtful. There are some deals with the devils that should never be considered and once the deal is made, the damage is irreversible. If you make such a deal don't be surprised that it doesn't go the way you were expecting.

People make mistakes and hopefully in the future they'll realize one day that the lie they told, the person they manipulated, the want they acted on wasn't such a clever thing to do.


The rest of the rules were all influenced by the first rule.


2) Choose your battles

Some battles are not worth fighting and will only do more damage if fought. No matter how much we may want to lash back and be right; the only thing to do is step back and walk away. This is usually the most difficult action to take and one that most people (including myself) are not able to do. But if you give the hateful reaction they want than you are only hurting yourself.

3) Know when to let go

When you come away from a person feeling more unhappy than happy, than maybe it's time to let go.

4) Truly understand why your saying good-bye

Don't say goodbye because it's the easy thing to do.

5) Have the courage to be yourself

I use to measure my self-worth by some-one else's ruler, not my own. I've learned to look past other people's expectations and judge myself by my own. I'm still learning to be my own story with all the twists and turns that any "good" story has.