Spend time with people who want you to be the best version of yourself

I recently suggested we watch a movie together as a family. Over the years I have learned with six kids in the house, (seven this week) you can’t ask them what they want to watch at the same time, you have to ask them individually. 

Perhaps there is no greater optimist than the parent who thinks his kids can agree on a movie to watch. So, I set about the task of picking a movie. 

When I asked one of our children what he wanted to watch, he didn’t tell me what he wanted to watch, he told me what he didn’t want to watch. And, predictably, it was a short list of movies he knew his sisters would choose. I told him I’d rather hear what he wanted to watch rather than what he didn’t want to watch. I told him he should be known for what he wants rather than what he is opposed to. 

Which got me thinking about us adults.

Let’s agree on a few things for the rest of this post. Let’s agree that time is finite. That is to say, you only have 24 hours in a day and many of those hours are already accounted for by things you have to do. You have to sleep. You have to eat. You have to take care of the kids, you have to cook, you have to clean, etc. 

If you want to do more than you already do, you would have to prioritize and maybe you do less of certain things or completely stop doing something that was not quite as important as the new thing you were choosing to do.

Many people have said that you need to remove toxic people from your life. While that sounds good on paper and in catchy social media posts, how does it work in reality? 

So here’s the question, what if we were known for what we stood for rather than what we opposed? In this context, it means that we did not just want to remove toxic people from our lives, but we added positive people to our lives. People who wanted us to be our best. 

We should try to spend time with people who see our value, who know who we are, and who want to help us reach our God-given potential.

So I’d like to suggest three ways that we can become who we were created to be. 

Spend time with people who will encourage you

There will always be people who are willing to tear us down. Critics are a dime a dozen. Perhaps your critics are those closest to you, or perhaps they’re people that you’ve known for a long time. Either way, we could all use a lot less negativity in our lives. 

Choose to spend more time with positive people who will encourage you. Choose to spend time with people to see the best in you. They see the best in you because they are looking for the best in you. And we do more often than not find what we are looking for. They believe in you and are not afraid to tell you.

Besides, we all have the toughest critic of all constantly reminding us of our failures. Ourselves. And that inner monologue needs to be countered by those around us. 

Spend time with people who help you step outside of your comfort zone

This one is particularly hard for many people. We like predictability and consistency. Our brains look for patterns that help us make sense of the world that we live in. Everybody likes warm water. Everybody likes doing things the way we’ve always done them, but we don’t grow when we keep doing things the way we’ve always done them. 

Personal growth comes from stepping outside of our comfort zones. I remember the old analogy of going to the gym and lifting weights. You can’t get any stronger if you don’t push yourself beyond your current limits.

One of the things that brings me great joy in life is to watch my wife, Kayla, speak and teach. She is gifted at both but was always more comfortable teaching in small environments and speaking from a stage. But she has something of value to say and with a little gentle encouragement from me (she might disagree with this detail) started saying yes more. As a result, thousands of families and many more children have benefitted from her stepping outside of her comfort zone.

I think it’s a sign of growth when you choose to spend time with people who challenge you, who like you for who you are, and who want to see how far you can go. 

Spend time with people who don’t mind saying “No” to you

While we’re talking about things that are hard for most people, this last one comes to mind. We all love hearing the word “Yes.” None of us like hearing the word “No.” we tell parents to say “Yes” to their children as much as possible. but I’m not talking about our children right now, I’m talking about us. 

The Bible says that iron sharpens iron. One of the ways we can “sharpen” each other is to not hang out with people who agree with us all of the time. I’ve found that I have benefitted very little from only spending time with people who constantly agree with me. 

I have a group of trusted people I run new ideas by before we move forward with them. They look for anything I can’t see, they expose any blindspots and help me refine them. That is how we get the best version of our ideas. That is also how we get the best version of ourselves, not by spending time with people who only say “Yes” to us but by spending time with people who are not afraid to say “No” to us when they need to. 

So, in conclusion, if you want to be happy eat candy. If you want to be healthy eat broccoli. If you want to be all that you were created to be, spend time with people who want you to be the best version of yourself.