“Raise them Kind”
I have talked about this before but in the last 3 years my husband and I have made a huge effort to be extremely mindful of our relationships and our lifestyle choices. We have worked hard to try and live an uplifting life with positive interactions. This has even went as far as me cutting out certain family members. Family, friend, foe it didn’t matter. If they were not genuine and encouraging, they weren’t welcome in our lives anymore. We have found that who you allow in your life makes more of an impact than one might think. It can have a ripple effect on to basically everything in your world. The way that you budget and spend money. How you talk. Your mood. Things that you post or say. Choices that you make. What you wear. The list is endless and changes for each situation but the reach of influence is undeniable huge. It’s soooo important to be picky with who you allow into your world and we want our children to grow up understanding this. Understanding that’s it’s okay and HEALTHY to let people go that cause you more harm/stress than good. It’s okay to avoid meaningless or negative relationships. It’s okay to say ‘no’.
It really started for me when my papa Jerry passed away 3 years ago and began with me finally blowing my top in regards to an ‘internet friend’ whom I had ALLOWED to constantly bring me negative feelings/thoughts. She was always over compensating for things that I’d talk or post about. There appeared to be this constant and overly obvious need for her to prove herself to me and to make me think that she has more than I do, to the point of me catching her in lies multiple times about things that she said that she had but didn’t. It was more complex than just the comparison aspect of the situation and went on for dare I say years before I broke. After you lose someone who is so important to you in such a shocking manner, you realize immediately how much petty drama on social media with someone who most likely isn’t capable of being a genuine, real friend is NOT worth it.
I had a bad habit of forgiving super easily and giving people chance after chance after chance despite me knowing deep down who they really are. I want to believe that people are mostly good and capable of redemption. We all make mistakes. We all have bad days. We all go through things. Some of us experience post partum issues or chemical imbalances that literally change who we are, resulting in us acting out in ways that aren’t a direct reflection of who we really are. People deserve 2nd chances. But 4th, 5th, 6th, a millionth chances? I didn’t have boundaries. I still struggle with that to some extent. If someone who has burned me countless times, apologizes and wants to be friends again my instinct is to dive back in head first and be their friend. My family and friends will tell you that when it comes to my relationships, I’m all or nothing. I’m loyal and forgiving to a fault. I’d do anything for that person and I give it my all. I fight their battles for them. I lose sleep when they are in distress. I worry. I love. I am there at the drop of a hate. I, at times sacrifice myself for them if need be. I have no issue with life long commitment and companionship, whether that be with my husband, family, or my friends. It takes a lot for me to finally give up on someone. I’m getting so much better about compulsive forgiving and welcoming back into my life though. I’ve slowly ( and for the most part) quietly dipped out of those relationships that were chronically harming my mental health. Now I am in an incredibly peaceful place of contentment with those in my circle. I am careful who I welcome in and careful who I let stay. I don’t do meaningless friendships and have taken it as far as to limit meaningless interaction too, within obvious reason.
With all of that said, I also acknowledge that I have been super toxic to others in some cases just as much as they were toxic to me. We fueled each other’s fires and bad habits. This being the case with the internet friend that I mentioned above. I played along and allowed her games to become my games. This was partly immaturity and partly that I deeply believe that I had lessons to learn from those situations. Lessons that changed me for the better so I can’t regret my part in it. I feel like God put me in those spots to grow me. I learned from it and learned not to fall into that hole again which is exactly what I’ve worked hard to do. I have to take a step back and pull myself together here and there when bad habits want to slide their way out of me but over all I’m super proud of how true to my mission I’ve stayed.
From working hard not to cuss as much to building my relationship with God and the people around me in an authentic way to giving heartfelt thought to every choice that I make, I’ve worked so stinking hard to live a more purpose driven life all around and to be the best person that I can be. That over all intention played a big part in us selling our home. Putting action to our dreams and goals. Not being content where we were because it’s easier and wishing that we had done this, this, or this. Making it happen rather than wishing that it was different. Traveling more. Taking bigger risks even if they made us uncomfortable. Staying out of debt and focusing on eliminating things that we do not need or use anymore. Being careful who we hang out with and where we spend our money. Being careful with who follows us on social media and who we follow. Being careful not to fall into back in to old habits on our off days or bad moods. Being careful not to take for granted how much traveling and adventuring we get to do. Being thankful for where we are at as a married couple and as parents. Being open minded when we need to be but being willing to let do when it’s time. Being careful what we say to people and that we don’t contribute to smack talking. Being careful who we raise our kids around and making sure that everyone that we hang with is an influence for the kids that we would be proud of if they turned out like them. God definitely opened so many doors for us between our church family, CC (our Homeschool community), and our new neighbors whom happen to also be ranchers with young kids. Life is indescribably wholesome and beautiful for us. Of course we have bad days. We have loss. We have stress sometimes. But over all there is no comparison to living a mindful and uplifting life. It has been the best thing that we have ever done.
In relation to these choices, I took it as far as to clean up my social media friends lists. Unfortunately this is a super timely process. You have to remove friends one at a time manually. You can’t just easily edit your list. I get followers daily on Instagram and just as quickly as I get them, I block any accounts that appear fake, aren’t overall encouraging/uplifting accounts, or aren’t content that I enjoy. Some people only care about the follow count but I definitely do NOT. My movement to an all around positive life reflects on every aspect of my life and social media is apart of that. Just this week I blocked 60ish people on IG and removed over 30 friends on my personal FB. My Facebook is private anyways but I am still cleaning up from when I added people left and right years ago. My IG is public because quite frankly, I looooove seeing other people’s stuff. I love lifestyle blogs and vlogs. I love seeing other people’s home decor and homesteads. I love watching how other families function and what works for them. I love watching minimalists organize and getting tips and tricks to things. I love seeing encouragement and advice on those pages. There is so much inspiration and motivation to be found on social media if you look in the right places and do not let yourself fall victim to comparison. They bring me joy and encouragement. And I love returning that so I don’t hide my page. I don’t hide anything about it at all. I have nothing to hide. I do however, filter who sees it and interacts with it if I feel like they are a troll or an overall negative person or if they simply don’t have the same values that I do within reason. Block. Block. Block. This isn’t exclusive to religion or political views either. I welcome diversity and have many friends who do not believe the same things that I do as far as those topics go. I am referring to pages with drama or mean words as well as pages with hardly any followers/no posts but view, like, and follow my stuff. I do a ton of interacting with people on social media. Even strangers. I don’t just have followers to have followers. I see them all as potential relationships so I monitor that.
If I could give you guys one bit of heartfelt and serious advice it would be to be mindful in all that you do. Big and small. If it does not make you want to be a better person or bring you happiness, take a note from Elsa and let it go. Watch how much more beautiful things are when you live a meticulously meaningful and positive life. We can not control everything that happens to us but we can control how we react to it and what we do with it.
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