Who Are You Becoming?

You become the five people you spend the most time with.

It’s a common saying. And although perhaps not demonstratively true, it certainly has veracity. It’s one of those phrases I encountered so often, that it began to lose it’s meaning. And then one day, about six months after my ex left, I found myself delivering that saying to a student who was making some poor social choices. As I was counseling her about her choices, I began to simultaneously reflect on my own.

I was doing great with the actual people that I was surrounding myself with – people with quality character from a wide range of age groups and backgrounds. I felt good about the friendships I had built and the new people that I was attracting into my life. As my student starting talking through her connections, I was feeling at peace with mine, as they were all people I was happy to emulate.

And then she mentioned a person – a former friend – and explained that although they no longer saw each other, that other girl was still a major (and negative) influence on my student’s life through the muddied channels of middle school drama and the burgeoning world of social media.

I stopped short. This thirteen-year-old girl, that I thought I was teaching, just taught me something. Because even though I was confident with the physical people in my life, I was spending substantial mental time with the shadow of my ex. In fact, if I thought about the energy invested and the influence received, he was definitely in the top five. If not even number one.

And I certainly didn’t want to become like him.

 

 

Thank you for sharing!

One thought on “Who Are You Becoming?

  1. Being mindful of our thoughts, and controlling where our thoughts wander off to, is a very important aspect of healing from a divorce. There will always be the triggers but we can choose to focus our energy elsewhere.

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