Is everything okay I asked?
She looked up and said yeah like I was annoying her and walked off in front of me.
I stopped where I was going, stood still for a minute looking at my feet thinking about her answer trying not to over analyse the ‘yeah’. I hadn’t seen her in ages and yet it was like I had inconvenienced her. I had asked because she had looked upset and as a friend asking was my job. I let out a sigh and looked up to see myself in the reflection of the shops glass doors.
I hadn’t checked myself over before heading to the shops that morning so taking advantage of the closed glass doors I looked at myself, my slightly clubby thighs and the shirt I was wearing. I looked okay but felt a little hmmm. The shirt was a blue Kmart number. An impulse buy that I regretted every time I wore it. It didn’t fit right, was the wrong shade of blue and yet I persisted because I don’t have that many clothes, and I thought I could rock the bad fit out.
However looking at myself I decided then I no longer liked how I looked or felt in that shirt. So despite having very few clothes and hating the idea of getting rid of more fast fashion, I would recycle it because it was better than having something take up space in my cupboard when I didn’t like the way it made me feel and holding on ‘just because’.
I then went back to the ‘yeah’ and the look that had gone with it. I had been here before and so like the blue shirt I was wearing I decided I would leave it there nothing personal it was just a bad fit.
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with,” says American motivational speaker Jim Rohn. So given that, you should think about the people you’re spending time with the same way you think about what you eat and how you’re exercising. S0 spend time with good people.
Good people, don’t have to be the same as you, just people you enjoy, who love and appreciate you. They are the ones who make you feel more alive, happy and not only adore who you are now but want you to be better in every way. Good people will help you get there too. They will love the Bridget Jones in you no matter how quirky you get. They will support you even on the dimest of days. Having good people around you means you’ll be less stressed and find more joy in daily things. You may not see the joy in cleaning pee off the floor but knowing your three-year-old is alive and peeing is something to be grateful for and having good people around you helps you see that in a crazy, crazy way.
Also from a science and health point of view, good people are really good people they are life savers. A study of women with ovarian cancer with lots of social support had much lower levels of a protein linked to more aggressive cancers. This made their chemotherapy treatments more effective. Another study found, women with breast cancer in a support group lived twice as long as those not in a group. They also had much less pain, life savers again I say.
Sheldon Cohen, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, says strong social support helps people cope with stress. “Friends encourage you to take better care of yourself. And people with wider social networks are higher in self-esteem, and they feel they have more control over their lives.”
So spend time with good people and if you can’t then control your interaction with them because everyone has an Aunt Millicent somewhere.
P.s How to get rid of essentially toxic people here.
P.s.s This is not the shirt in question it was too cheap to even have an image of however the online store and clothing brand Autograph which is where its from is having a 70% off sale just so you know.
*Research details here.
