How To Walk Away From Toxic Relationships | Life-Mastery Q&A

I've been teaching for five years now, but I feel a calling to go to med school. Is it normal for people to change their mind so drastically? I feel crazy and wanting to do something like this. Most of my colleagues tell me I'm not. So first of all, you might need some new colleagues that are calling you nuts. Just throwing it out there. In all seriousness, it's normal for people to want to change their override priorities, and I'll tell you why. Most people end up leaving high school, going into a college, based on pursuing a career that someone else thinks thinks they should pursue. What I mean by that is maybe your parents were lawyers, doctors, musicians, or whatever. It's normal for the parents to want you to walk out their life in their footsteps or have you walk out the life that they wish they had in their footsteps they wish they had made. Yeah, that's right. You see what I'm saying? Most people start out their life trying to become something they're not trying to be. Going to a profession that doesn't really matter to them. Why is that important? Well, because by the time you get into your mid-20s, maybe even your early 30s, you begin to question all kinds of areas of life. Am I really doing what I'm called to do? Am I really doing what I love? Am I really making an impact? Am I really actually walking into something that I want to do on a regular basis, consistently over time, day after day after day? And all too often, statistics will show that roughly 70% of the people who ask that question get the answer no. That's why it's important. It's important to identify who you are at your core. It's important to understand what values you share. It's important to understand your overall emotional intelligence. It's important to understand your entire self awareness axis. It's entirely important for you to understand how you were made and what you were made to do. How do you do that? Well, there's a couple different things I think that you could probably take advantage of. One, you can always visit Journeyprinctal.com resources and for you specifically, I would actually download the two ebooks, one being Five Principles for a Personal Breakthrough. The second ebook meaning understanding what It Takes to Drive. I'm sorry, Understanding what Drives. You would think I wrote the book, I would probably know the title, right? Understanding what Drives you, which actually comes with a personality assessment inside of it that allows you to take full advantage of understanding more about yourself to make sure your skill sets are properly aligned. So that's one. Okay. So that's one action, one website, two ebooks. That's action take number one or take action number one. Take action number two is I did a whiteboard video here on YouTube that's called the Nine Mission Driven Marketplaces. I recommend that you at least take the time to go watch that specific video. And the reason I think that that's important is because in it I actually uncover nine specific mission driven marketplaces, meaning these are nine different areas that are of nine different areas and or profession categories that allow you to exercise the best of you in the right mission field, so to speak. Because I believe that every single occupation has and is its own mission field. Each one of those can make a massive impact or a low impact based on the person who's actually operating in it. So you can use that video to better understand the non mission driven marketplaces. To better understand are you actually headed in the right direction? Okay, so that's step one and step two. Now back to part of your original question. Should I leave what I'm doing and then lean into med school? So first of all, you need to look at your financial situation. Do you have the financial wherewithal to actually take advantage of that and actually lean into that? Because med school is not cheap. Let's just be real, okay? And can you do it maybe at a slower time frame at night or something like that, using a night school or night class to kind of get some better understanding of what that might look like, to kind of tiptoe your way into it, make sure this is what you want to do, okay? If in fact that those answers are yes, then what you probably need to do is actually plan a transition. You shouldn't walk into your boss and say, hey boss, I want to go to med school. I'm out. Peace. Right? You never want to burn a bridge. Instead, what you might consider doing is actually beginning to read a lot of books, take a lot of time, look at the courses, figure out when the courses align, what the overall expense is going to be like, do your due diligence to understand whether or not you should actually be pursuing that, okay? Because as you get more information, you'll become clearer on whether or not this is the direction you should take. Alright? Now if assuming all of that checks out, all of that checks out, you can make the move in a stable fashion. If you can make the move in a total stable fashion, maybe your, maybe your spouse is able to provide income while you're going to school and you guys have talked it through and he's on board and she's on board. Fantastic. Follow your passion. But what I would recommend is make sure, again, this is what you're passionate about. You need to uncover why it is you feel like med school is the option. Why do you feel like med school is your place to serve? Why do you feel like that's your biggest place that you can make an impact? Ask yourself those questions and see what comes out. Because there's a high likelihood that, yes, in fact, med school is what you need to do because that puts you in the medical industry, which is one of the mission driven marketplaces.

To serve people and help people. But you got to identify clearly. Don't just go because you think the pay is better, because you think the hours are better, because I promise the hours aren't better. Right. Just take the time. Don't rush it. Remember, I've said before on different episodes and different shows to make sure you give the bigger decisions the most amount of quality time. So make sure you do the diligence, make sure you use those steps. And. And I have a feeling you'll shake out and get the answer you're looking for. Hope that helps.

All right, our next question is this one. Check this out. After watching your whiteboard lesson on toxic relationships, I've realized that my friends are a bad influence. Most of them don't want to see me succeed. How do I have the courage to walk away? We've all been friends for 15 years. You know what? This is actually a really important question. And one of the reasons reasons it is is because one of the leading factors to keeping people stuck is the relationships they have. One of the ways I know that is my own father for a while, unfortunately, due to his own limiting beliefs and his own level of really things not working out on his behalf, he thought he was actually serving me by trying to tell me all the things that could go wrong, all the things that maybe I shouldn't try to achieve. Now, he was doing that from a place of love. So many of your friends will probably be sharing those things out of a place of love and concern, but really what they're saying is they have limiting beliefs and they don't think that you can achieve past their limiting beliefs. That's important because not only do you have to achieve past their limiting beliefs, you also have to achieve past your limiting beliefs. And you are going to have to achieve past their limiting beliefs first. Now, one of the things that I try to do is I will actually have a season of life where I will actually tell somebody in love, hey, Look, I love you, I think a lot of you, but I've got to go do this thing over here. We can connect sparsely, but you're not going to be spending all your time with them. You see, you've heard people say before that the five most important relationships around you basically determine your overall outcome. Well, that's true. So look at the five, four or five people around you most often. Are they actively helping you move to the next level. And if they're not, you just have to be honest with yourself. I mean, you just, you seriously have to be honest with yourself. You can't hold back. You can't. You know, in the question you mentioned here, how, like, wait a minute, how do I have the courage to walk away? You just do it, you do it. You do it in love, just like I just mentioned before. All you've got to do is sit them down and say, hey, look, I'm gonna go do this thing. I know you disagree with me. That's okay. I still love you. We can hang out every so often, but we just can't hang out all the time because I'm gonna be busy doing this other thing. Maybe you're doing seminars, maybe you're doing books, maybe you're hanging out with a different mentor. Your most limited asset on the planet is going to be your time. It's the one thing that you can't get back. You lose money, you can make more money, you lose friends, you can get more friends, right? Your time, on the other hand, is the most valuable asset that you have. And you got to make sure you invest in your time in such a way that allows you for the best possible personal growth. Now toxic relationships, on the other hand, will be almost anger based, whereas a typical friend may not be anger based. Now if you have a toxic relationship that's anger based, you need to put as much distance between you and that person as possible, regardless of whether or not you feel like they can be awesome and amazing one day future if they just change these few things. You see, we get lost in the fact that we think we can change someone just by being around them. The reality is the more we're around toxic behaviors and toxic people, unfortunately we get changed in the process. We start adapting those limiting beliefs, we start adapting those senses of self worth, low self worth. So I say all of that to try to wrap it up here. Be very selective of the friends and the family that you choose to spend the most time with, especially as it relates to your life and your life goals. You've got to constantly asking yourself, are they helping me get to where I want to go, or are they preventing me from getting where I want to go? And once you can answer that question, you can very clearly understand whether or not the time that you spend with them should be downsized and or replaced altogether. That's how you know it. That's what you need to do. Now. Here's a byproduct of what happens when you do have the courage and you do have the will and you do have the strength to go ahead and push past the limiting beliefs of the other people. Here's what happened. Almost five or six years later, my dad came back to me. Unbeknownst to me, we were hanging out at a restaurant, and he just walked up to me and say, I just want to tell you how proud I am of you. I got to be honest, I never thought. I never thought you're. You're. Your businesses would ever be this big. I never thought that you would be this far along. I just. I didn't. I didn't know what I didn't know. I'm proud of you. Will you forgive me? I was like, of course. Like, I just had to do what I had to do. That's the aspect of actually having the courage. Here's what I've learned about something. When you go out and you personally seek to advance yourself in your personal development with the right learning, with the right mentorship, with the right education, if you will, you unknowingly give other people permission to do the same thing. Because what I didn't understand is my father was watching me that entire five or six years. He was watching to see if I'd put in the work, if I put in the sacrifice, if I refused to give up, if I was willing to climb the mountain.

And what happened? He came back, not only affirmed me and admired me for what I had been through, but it also gave him the courage to start the journey for himself. Now, Fast forward another 10 years. My father is a fantastic grandfather. He's a great father. Yes. He made a huge mess of my early childhood, and he's accountable to that. And he wishes he could take it back every day, which is why I don't hold it over his head. Why? Because he's been here beside me this entire time. But he had to have permission to have the courage to follow something that I was already doing. You may inspire the very change that your entire family tree needs just by taking that first step. So take the step. Never stop, never quit. Keep it moving. Have courage. And let courage build up for you. See you in the next one. All right, our next question is this one. This is a really good one as well. How do you work through jealousy, being defensive? Because I'm realizing now it's the root cause of my hurts, my rejection. All right, let's take some time on this one. Let's understand where jealousy comes from. Jealousy typically comes from by the thought or the feeling that someone is going to steal or somehow take from you. That's where jealousy comes from. So, for example, let's say you start dating an amazing person and you've never dated an amazing person before. Maybe everybody before them were jerks and a pain in the butt and treated you bad. But yet all of a sudden you meet this person and they're amazing. They're considerate, they're kind, they're generous. Well, your first instinct is, I don't want to lose that, right? So then you might come across and over. Over be overly protective. Maybe you go hang out with their friends for the very first time. And as you're hanging out with their friends for the very first time, someone comes up, right? And walks up to your person and starts flirting with them. And you go into defensive mode, Anger or you better get out of my way, right? You get aggressive. Really what you're signaling is that you own someone else. And what you need to understand about people is people cannot be property, should never be property. That is the quickest way to self sabotage a great relationship because no one wants to be owned, controlled, or manipulated. However, what you also need to understand is even though that person may be amazing for you and stuff like that, as long as you do the best to take care of the relationship and consistently offer communication, consistently lead with kindness, consistently offer empowerment, consistently work together and communicate well and do all those different things and have a lot of fun. Like, have a lot of fun, build a best friend style relationship. The quickest way to offset the feeling of the need of jealousy is to actually build an amazing relationship. And in the event that that person decides that they want to move on, you let them. Because at the end of the day, what you really want is someone who actually cares enough about you that you care enough about them. Or you know what I'm saying? It's you guys care equally for each other, right? When someone refers to having the right person.

I want to meet my person. Which was like a big, big buzzword on the Bachelor and Bachelorette years ago. Where's my person? What they're really saying is this. I want someone to love that loves me the same equal amount in return, right? Well, what is true love? It's truly admiring somebody. It's truly being loyal to somebody. It's also truly putting up with somebody. Okay, I do a lot of things, right? I do a lot of goofy things that my wife can't stand, okay? And vice versa. The trick is learning to find that balance. Jealousy and defensiveness are always going to kill and strangle any relationship. In fact, what I would do is every time you feel the urge to be jealous, controlling, or somehow be manipulative to own control of that person, I want you to mentally picture you actually walking up to their throat and squeezing it. The reason I want you to do that is not because I want you to actually go and do it, because that would be horrible, but it's because that's actually what's happening to their actual emotional self esteem and soul. You are inflicting pain on someone that you supposedly love.

Does that make sense? Does it make sense? Of course it doesn't make sense. For example, would you want someone to walk up and squeeze your throat as tight as they possibly could? Especially someone who says, I love you?

Of course not. That's what jealousy does.

Jealousy says, I own it, stay away from it. Or else.

At a moderate form, or even a physical form. Jealousy will always kill the beauty in any style of relationship. It is the weed that grows up in a garden that totally kills the plants. So how do you get over it? How do you work through it? Well, one, you can use the imagination and the imagery I mentioned before about the strangulation, strangulation thing and you can come up with a different technique. That's just the first thing that popped in my mind. The second thing you can do is be self aware of yourself and your own tendencies. When you feel jealousy rising in you, maybe you take a step back and go kind of collect yourself for a few minutes. Maybe you go into your journal and start writing some things down. Hey, look, I felt this way. I realize it's not healthy. Maybe I need to pray and meditate on a few things. Does that make sense? Each of these techniques does one specific thing. It forces you to look at it with a different set of eyes and a different set of perspective. Because I have found that most people, when they uncover that things are not as great as they think they are, meaning they don't. They get to the place where they realize that those things are destructive. They're more prone to deal with them in a healthy manner. So the more self aware you can Be about this particular trait in this particular moment and be aware of it in the moment. Not just be aware of it after you've had a chance to do something stupid and have to reflect on it, but be aware of your feelings in the moment. You can actually control and mold your feelings to suit the actual environment, including walking away and going to sit down by yourself. All right, the final thing that I think is important here is this. If you truly have a Quiet. Excuse me. If you truly have a great relationship, then after the event passes, you should be able to take you and your partner and go sit down on a bed or a couch somewhere in the right space at the right time in a peaceful manner and say, I just want to let you know I was really struggling today.

I think so much about our relationships and I feel like I love you so much. And to be honest, I don't. I just, I right as of right now in my life, I can't. I don't know that I could picture my life without you. You don't complete me, but you definitely add value to my life. And to be honest, I felt like this person was flirting with you. And whether that was true or not, that's how I felt. And I just don't want to feel that way.

A great relationship, the partner in return will say, I understand how you feel and I don't want to make you feel that way. I'll try to do a better job of stiff arming people if I feel like they're flirting. But I also need you to trust me. And trust is the by far the hardest thing you have to face in relationships. Right? Trust is built over time. You never give somebody all your trust up front. Right. But you also shouldn't doubt whether or not they're trustworthy until they've given you evidence to prove that. Okay? So that's a big, big distinction. So again, great relationships have great communication. At the end of an event, after you've had a chance to collect yourself, don't throw a grenade in the relationship in the moment because you're frustrated. Don't do that. Instead, take a step back, collect yourself, set up a time to meet with your partner after the fact and say, this is how I felt. Because if your partner truly cares about you, they're going to care about how you feel. They may not agree with how you feel. They may see it completely different and that's okay. But you want to make sure that with a quality relationship, you have the evidence you need to actually discuss things at a vulnerable and trust At a vulnerable and transparent level. If in the event that they blow it off, right. That they just, ah, you're crazy. That I've known that person for 85 years. I can tell you right now, I've had people flirt with me that I didn't think were flirting with me just because I knew them for a long time and vice versa with my wife. Right. There's something unique about your spouse and about your partner that can tell you whether or not they think someone else is flirting with you. Okay. We're hypersensitive to it. We just are. Right. But if the partner says, hey, look, you're crazy, whatever, then you probably don't have the communication in the foundation that you think you do, which may cause you to assess the relationship in general.

Right. Some people are naturally flirty. We've talked a lot about personality styles before here on this channel over and over again. There's lots of videos here on this channel that you can check out if you're not sure what that is. Right. Each personality style has their, has their own nature. A high I is very friendly. They're very friendly people. They're like, hey, how you doing? Give me a hug. How you mom and them like, they're, they're all over the place. All right. To a high S or a high C. That's very uncomfortable. Right? Because they think, they see that as flirting. Because in their world, from their perspective, they're much more methodical about how they move forward. They're relational and they can smile, but they would never walk up and give you a hug. Because hugs are reserved for people you actually love and you're intimate with. You see what I'm saying? Perspective matters. That's why you deal with the moment personally. Step away and then at the right time, sit down with your partner and just say, I may be completely off base here, but this is how I felt. And if your partner is the right partner, they're going to say, I understand how you feel. I don't know that I totally agree with it, but let's talk it through because I don't want you to feel that way. You see what I'm saying? That's the technique that I would use to overcome jealousy and defensiveness. It's a two prong approach. It's I got to work on me and also I have to be vulnerable enough to share it with you so we can work on our relationship together. If you do those, you'll win. Hope that helps.

Alright, I hope you enjoyed the question and answer session for today. If you want your question answered on a future episode, or here or on Instagram, go ahead and email me at questions at journeyprinciples. Com and I'll be happy to take the time to answer it the best way possible so you can begin to win in your life. Thanks again for watching.