Getting Rid Of That ONE Bad Apple In Your Life

There is a saying that,

"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with."

That being said look soon to be pruning at least ONE of those back out of your life cause most of us hang on too long to ONE bad apple. Your five apples may be good, but at least do some self examination and check. You may need to

• Fire a friend who is arrogant or constantly belittles you despite at one time getting along
• Put an end to a romance that is not now either romantic, based on love, consumes too much emotional energy, or is for "show" to others only. A waste of your life.
• Dissolving a personal or business partnership because the good you got out of it early on, that state is no longer there

You get the drift. These bad apples in your life are toxic relationships. No relationship starts out toxic, it just progresses to that point and like the bad apple in the barrel spoiling your other four shiny apples it drags you down, spoils your life, and you are not living optimally.

Characteristics of these bad apples you need to cut loose:

• The other person does not truly care about you
• This so called "friend" or "romantic partner" or "business associate" or "significant other" does not uplift you
• It is a Win-Lose relationship. Guess who is getting stuck with the lose end?
• Due to the other person's ambition, and perhaps their hold of power or money over you, they are "using" you for their own purposes. It is manipulation. Get out of your fear, man up (ladies too), and take a sword to that tether they have over you
• They have no remorse in hurting you
• They will classically never say they are sorry, unless using sorry to further their own interests
• The words from these people bring you down a lot of the time. They can be demeaning to you. Not all the time, but on balance.
• It is all about THEM. Always about them. They never walk side by side with you
• Their star will always outshine yours. ALWAYS. They like it that way by the way.
• They are truly pessismistic people at their core. If you check their HAPPINESS quotient they are unhappy people inside
• These toxic ones can be bitter people
• They like to criticize, you and others
• Often they have superiority attitudes with you and others
• They are a lot of the time narcissistic. The world revolves around them
• A bad apple has a sense of entitlement. They want the world given to them on a silver platter. They deserve it, even without working or earning something. Hard work in their mind does not exist and they prefer short cuts
• They will even outright let you know they are different in a special, better way, not equal way than you
• They do not respect you for just being who you are. They want to change you
• They find lots of flaws with you and while they admit THEY are not perfect you are the one that has a long way to go to improve to be seen fit in their eyes

It's amazing when you read through that list ANYONE is friends with these types but they do WORM THEIR WAY in to our lives at some point, almost under false pretense.

In contrast the good apples, those you polish, admire, love and NEVER want to let go in your life meet this simple criterion

• Good apples are gentle souls who make the world better and very much CARE about YOU!!!

Choose wisely your inner circle. It is about YOUR attitude with who you allow to be the core folks for you.

I can tell you who you are by who your five people are. Don't let ONE of them be a bad apple! You already have four good ones. Make it FIVE.