Toxic Relationships: Knowing When to let go - Appreciate Your Worth | Brittany Anderson

We all have heard of toxic dumps, toxic chemicals and toxic waste. They are all deadly to humans and can cause death. But what about toxic people? What effect do they have on our lives and our businesses and our bottom line? That's exactly what Brittany Anderson is going to talk about. How and why you need to rid your life of toxic people. Brittany has a sweet life. Yes, Suite is one of the businesses that she serves as chief operating officer for. Suite Financial is a full service financial advisory firm located in Minnesota, providing financial services to hundreds of clients all over the United States. The second company that she's sweet on is called Dare to Dream Enterprises, which provides clarity in a world of chaos so that people can focus on the things in their lives that matter the most to them. Dare to Dream supports people that own businesses, women in transition, and anybody looking for a bigger future and more control over their life. This is Brittany's first attempt at a talk like this and she promises that both she and her daughter to be are going to give it their best shot. So hopefully the baby will not be coming in the next 10 minutes.

Maybe.

Seriously, Brittany's title is Appreciate your worth. Live your life free of toxic relationships. Please, please welcome Brittany Anderson. Thank you.

All right, so when you hear the term toxic person, what comes to mind? Thoughts, Words? Images? Selfish. Negative. Negative. Mike Koenigs. All right, all right. So for those of you that struggle to come up with a word or idea behind this, I'm going to rephrase this a little. Can you think of somebody in your life who you choose to limit your time and attention with because they are draining and because they just, they kind of suck the life out of you? How about the Debbie and Donnie Downers of the world, the people that are negative about everything and everyone. What about an employee? I was listening to a podcast recently and the guy actually referred to a wrong fit employee as a swamp monster. Somebody that makes you want to drain the swamp to get rid of the problem. What about a business partner? Somebody who you know down in your gut that it is the wrong fit for you, but for whatever reason, you have not found a way to part ways, even though every interaction leaves your sanity tested. So that today is what we are going to call toxic people or toxic relationships. So I want to take it one step further and actually put a little spin on this by having just one toxic relationship in your life. Think about how that productivity, how much that productivity in dollars is worth to you. That's what makes this a $250,000 idea. Because just a couple hours for most of you in this room of lost productivity is like just tossing thousands of dollars out the window. So when you think about when you're stressed out, burnt out, and not yourself, how much is that worth? How expensive is that? So today I'm going to actually share with you a very, very personal story about not only how a negative a person, a negative, toxic person can affect your life, but also three key ways that I have found that can help you free yourself of a toxic relationship. So there's a date and time that I will never forget. That date is December 11th of 2016. A mere 74 days ago, it was a call from my brother to say that our youngest sister died. Gone. Taken from us at the ripe young age of 17. She had fought a battle with cystic fibrosis her whole life, but as you can see from the outside looking in, she was a normal, healthy kid. Imagine how you would have felt in this situation. For me, my shock turned to devastation. Devastation to tears and tears to guilt. Guilt because I allowed a toxic person, a toxic situation, to take a relationship from me. And in my personal situation, it. It was my father. Maybe you can think of a time where you have had to deal with a toxic family member. You know, I look at it, and toxic people are takers. When you're looking at givers versus takers, toxic people take. For me, my dad took my confidence. He took my financial freedom at such a young age that no other person should have to deal with at that point in their life. So again, maybe you have been faced with a toxic family member. And if you have, you may have been faced with the most difficult but most necessary decision to have to cut them from your life. So during a time of grief, I was also faced with another emotion, and that was fear. I was going to have to go to this funeral, and I was going to have to face my father, somebody who's caused a lot of pain and anguish in my life. And, you know, I was gearing up for this funeral and all I could think about was, okay, I need a power word. So I was literally googling power words, something to get me through this time. I was leaning towards strength or courage because those two words just seemed to make a lot of sense for what I was going through. And then a single solitary F word hit me in the face. And it's not the F word that we hear a lot around here. It was freedom. Freedom from toxicity, freedom from fear, and freedom from allowing anyone or anything to ever impact me negatively again. And that's what brings Me to my first point that I have for you in dealing with toxic people, it's to free yourself from the bounds that they place. Now, I'm going to piggyback on Craig and I'm going to make everybody close their eyes. So close your eyes. And I want you to think about a toxic person or people from your life, and I want you to think about the negative emotion that comes with that. Now, I want you to imagine releasing that person from your life. You're no longer dealing with fear, frustration, anxiety, depression. You're no longer interrupted by. By that person or people. Now open your eyes. How does that release feel? Is it freeing? Do you feel less stressed? More sane? There's actually a quote out there. I'm not sure who wrote this. I wish I could give it credit somewhere, but it says, respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, granted, grows you, or makes you happy. It's like Joe says all the time, be willing to destroy anything in your life that isn't excellent. And that brings me to my second key point here, and it's to break the cycle of toxic relationships before it starts or before it gets so out of control that you don't know how to go back. So what do they say? They say it takes 21 days to make a habit. Took me 24 years to break one. 24 years old, I found myself in a marriage where I literally cried almost every single day from verbal, emotional, and near physical abuse. And at the time, I wasn't pregnant, so I didn't have an excuse to cry every day like I do now. My poor husband. But that's where this F word comes back into play. Can you think of a time where a light bulb has gone off in your head and you're like, you know what? I am allowing something to happen in my life that is not okay. It goes against my values. And you know what? Enough is enough. That's exactly where I was at. And that's where the F word comes back into play when I reflect back on that time in my life. It wasn't strength or courage that allowed me to leave that relationship. It wasn't. It was freedom. It was that feeling of freeing myself from a toxic relationship and being able to move forward. And you know what? It felt darn good. So that brings me to my third and final point in helping you to deal with toxic relationships in your life. And that is that no matter how dark of a situation you are in and how dark the person is that you are dealing with, there is Some silver lining. There is something positive for you to focus on. And by shifting your mindset, that is where the breakthroughs come in. That's where your insights come into play. Can you think of a time where you have had to free yourself from a toxic relationship? And can you think of the consequences that came with that? Was it in the form of a lost relationship like I had with my sister? Again, a simple shift in mindset, focusing on the gains versus the losses. That is what is going to help get you through. Because you know what I gained when I left my husband and I cut my father from my life. I gained an awesome husband who is my rock. I gained a little girl who is the light of so many people's lives. That's her unicorn hair, by the way. Like, she literally tells me to put a unicorn in. I have another girl on the way. I started a business that fulfills my passions. My income more than doubled. But more than anything else, more than anything else, I gained freedom. Freedom from feeling judged in how I deal with toxic people. Freedom from allowing anybody to affect me in that negative way. Freedom to say I love you to somebody before I can't anymore. So my action for you is to decide what does your freedom look like from toxic people and toxic relationships and act on it today. Not tomorrow, not next week, next month, today. And then take the negative energy that you are applying to that situation and put it to good use. Dive into your passions. Spend time with people that give you energy and excitement for life. Because that's all you've got. When I walked into my sister's funeral, I'll never forget how I felt. I had decided consciously when I walked in there that no matter what, when, why, how, whatever context, I interacted with my father again because I knew it will happen in the future. It didn't matter who he was, because I was free. I knew within a couple minutes he was the same manipulative person even at his own daughter's funeral. But that was okay because I was free of that. So there was a song that played at the funeral that I'll never forget. The lyrics, it said, I owned every second that this world could give. I swear I lived own every second that this life can give you. This is your life and you have the freedom to do with it or with whom you please. Wow. Thank you.