The impact of others

Throughout my journey to achieve my PhD I concentrated my work on how others happiness, satisfaction, or positive attitude impacts you or those around you.

I did my research on this very topic and for the nearly 5 years of working on this I concluded that indeed peoples personal satisfaction and attitudes do impact others. Now as with any research, I can't go and generalize the findings to everyone, but I still believe that there is a true connection between your circle of friends and family and your personal satisfaction.

This week I have seen this play out in my life. I am usually a very positive person and rarely does anything really hit me that takes me out of this realm. This week it was different.

This week I found myself allowing others attitudes and behaviors negatively impact me. THEIR behavior, THEIR attitudes, THEIR feelings began to pull me down. They didn't like something or another, they thought something was not done right, they made statements that were hurtful without knowing, they didn't care enough about the big picture only their scene.

Each day I found myself getting down. I started getting back into the mind of "what could I have done better", "what could I have done to make them not mad"...blah, blah, blah...

This morning I woke up with a different attitude. An attitude that I found saying "what is positive or purposeful about beating yourself up over others behaviors"? The impact of others is strong and it is real, but we don't have to automatically just take it.

The research I did was on improving positive views and behaviors and in my small study there was improvement on both the participants and their immediate support teams. The same holds true for negative views and behaviors.

I am writing this today not to say that others are wrong or negative...only to say that I have a choice on what do to with what my perception and views are about a situation, especially when I am directly involved.

It is mine to determine what I do with my personal feelings, attitudes and purpose. No one else gets the final say. Today I determine to live with purpose.