Positive Affirmations

As I scan the pages of Facebook, Twitter, internet forums and even my private text messages, there is a 'positive' movement out there to cleanse yourself from all the hurt, sorrow, anguish and bad influences in your life. Phrases like 'how to be happy… delete all the toxic people out of your life,' 'happiness is the best revenge,' 'keep people in your life that truly love you, motivate you, encourage you, inspire you, enhance you and make you happy,' and 'be around people who love you just the way you are' are just a few that make you think about who you invite into your life and who you keep in your life.

Gone are the days that people held onto grudges with family members and released them at their funeral knowing that that people who hurt them, destroyed their spirit or couldn't muster up anything nice to say about them when they were alive could no longer affect them anymore, as they were no longer with us. The late Baby Boomers and beyond are more courageous now to let their feelings be heard, and if they aren't heard, then the silence is deafening. More and more, you hear of family members who haven't spoken in years, sometimes decades, and sometimes they can't even remember why they weren't speaking… but other times you hear the bitterness in their voice because when speaking of that person, the episode or episodes that lead to the silence remains raw. No longer is blood thicker than water. Loyalty remains when their is mutuality, and once that mutuality becomes lop-sided, then that relationship has past its expiry date.

People post these positive affirmations in social media to make a public stance. To announce that people are no longer going to hurt them, to appreciate the people in their lives that make them happy and positive about themselves, to affirm to themselves what's right to remain. The private stances are the unfriending on Facebook and other social media, the reduction or elimination of phone calls, emails or visits. And it depends on your maturity level of you choose to publicly defame someone who's deeply hurt you by throwing their belongings on the front lawn, naming them in a derogatory way in social media, defacing their car, all those wonderful things you see on the news, in movies or comedians talk about that are stranger than fiction.

Getting on with your life and allowing positivity to shine through is the only way you can move on from your past and appreciate your future. You come to a point in life that you can only get on with your life by eliminating the people and aspects in your life that no longer work for you. The poison in your lives can vary from people being unsupportive, showing a lack of compassion, putting you down for everything you do or say, not appreciating you, using you, destroying your self-esteem, physically harming you, judging you when you do something that makes you happy and going out of their way to destroy relationships that mean the world to you. You don't need people in your lives that kill your spirit. You need people who support you one hundred percent.

So, as I read more and more of these publicly posted shouts of people moving on with their lives, I see more and more people coming to terms with loving themselves more than the circumstances they find themselves in. It's great to see so many others have the courage to do what's best for themselves, and surround themselves with those who deserve their love the most.