Sunday, May 19, 2013

Do you know how to set boundaries on and offline? Odilia Rivera-Santos

There are clients, friends, close friends, fans and acquaintances. It's important to categorize individuals in your life in order to establish healthy boundaries on and offline.
Your peers are people who share enough commonalities to allow conversation to flow and I would never say it is important for a person to have a certain level of education because I've known brilliant people with a fifth grade education.
I am an optimist, a striver, a hardworker and not one to give up easily on a goal, so I am naturally allergic to lazy people, pessimists, people who whine or those who see lost opportunities but none of the opportunities headed in their direction with neon signs.
I focus on the present, peek at the past to learn how to undo a current behavior that is not serving me and I keep it moving.
Although I graduated from a fancy college and have taken a lot of college courses beyond my degree, I appreciate the benefits of what a keen mind can learn from the world and work or the informal education. Intelligence, an inquisitive mind and being able to have an argument based on discussion of facts, not feelings, is all I need to connect along with a healthy dose of optimism.

After a conversation or exchange, online or offline, with someone, I ask myself
"Is this a person I want in my life?"
"Is this person an energy sucker?"
"Is this person verbalizing his/her own insecurities through attacking others or attacking me?"
"How do I feel after dealing with this person?"

Energy is energy, whether online or irl. It's important to be clear about relationships.

PEOPLE WHO BELONG IN MY WORK LIFE: If a person wants to disagree with me just to disagree with me, writes a response to something I've written online in an incoherent manner, and has no salient points, this is a sign of insecurity. This character is challenging my confidence in myself and my ideas, not my ideas.
This is something I would categorize as a work issue -- something which happens in a classroom if I'm teaching. As a teacher, I would help the student write in a cogent manner and I would teach the student to argue by asking pertinent questions.
Something along the lines of . . . Where is your evidence for disagreeing with this statement?
This is not a person I would have in my personal life.

DEPRESSED, UNMOTIVATED PEOPLE WHO WANT TO TAKE HOSTAGES:
I have no friends who are depressed and unmotivated because I find people like this very exhausting. When I encounter students like this, I am careful to keep the conversations short and focused because this type of personality continually shares negative information about their own lives, their friends' lives, and what they see on the news. Their focus is on the ugliness in the world and their own feelings of helplessness, as if they could never do anything to make the world better. These are the people who live and breathe the 'problem' and are not interested in discussing solutions. I really need a salary attached in order to engage with this kind of person.
I used to tell depressed students to watch standup comedy before going to bed instead of the news.

PERSONAL LIFE: My friends read books, newspapers, and they are strong-minded opinionated people. They have goals and work toward them on a daily basis, they research issues and they find my confidence inspiring, not threatening.

DELETING NEGATIVE ENERGY FROM YOUR LIFE
I am actively spring-cleaning my life and social media accounts. I have no interest in having people in my life who are not doing everything possible to be healthier, happier and more intelligently productive.
The people who always have the sad responses to my status updates or who whine about how miserable their lives are can hire me as a Wellness Coach, but they won't be chatting with me on Facebook or Twitter.