10 ways your loved ones make you a loser
If you are surrounded by family and friends who are always ready to help you, listen to you and give you advice, this is great. Close people can significantly improve the quality of your life. But change works the other way too.
Sometimes people you love who want the best for you reduce your self-confidence, kill motivation, and prevent you from building a happy future. We have collected several ways how your family and friends gradually turn you into a loser.
They take too much care of you
Close people love to surround us with their care, but everything is fine in moderation. Excessive attention and attempts to protect you from any difficulties bring you only harm. Such concern will stifle your independence and deprive you of the opportunity to acquire important life skills.
Any concern should not go beyond reasonable boundaries. If a loved one begins to lead you, criticize, demonstrate your failure, or take responsibility for your actions, pull yourself together and talk frankly with him. Explain that you can cope with your problems yourself, and when you need help, you will turn to him.
They influence your behavior
There are probably people in your environment who express their good attitude towards you, hurting your behavior. For example, when you are on a strict diet, and your mother, out of great love, offers you a freshly cooked pie, or when you want to quit smoking, and a friend with whom you have not seen for a long time asks you to make an exception for him and go out with his smoke.
Thus, close people shatter your will, forcing you to choose yourself. The more often your relatives, friends, or girlfriend push you to make such decisions, the easier it will be for you to allow yourself to do things that you previously thought were unacceptable.
They make you feel disappointed in yourself
Perhaps people close to you are building some expectations about you. Parents hope that you will graduate with honors, friends believe that you will create a successful business, and your loved one makes overly ambitious plans for your future life with you. All these people are dear to you, so you try to meet their expectations, and when this does not work out, you are disappointed in yourself.
Often there is such a situation: relatives, instead of supporting you at a critical moment, begin to finish off, believing that this somehow motivates you to do more and try harder than before. You only drop your self-esteem below the baseboard, watching how your most beloved people openly talk about being a failure.
They violate your boundaries
Some best friends believe that there should be absolutely no secrets in their relationship, so they feel free to ask personal questions, demand information from you that you are not in a hurry to share, and, in response to your refusal, remind you that friends do not have a friend. In the same way, relatives can violate your boundaries: interrogate you about a new relationship, force you to introduce yourself to your girlfriend, and discuss topics you do not want to share. They skillfully manipulate feelings of guilt and resentment so that you, without noticing it, start playing by their rules.
The absence of personal boundaries in communicating with loved ones ceases to embarrass you, and you do not try to establish them in relations with others. But always remember that personal boundaries must be protected in the name of your safety. After all, when a person knows too much about you, no one can guarantee that he will not use this information against you.
They provoke your fights with your girlfriend
Close people will always be on your side. And when it comes to relationships, this is more a minus than a plus. Parents, relatives, and friends believe that it is permissible for them to criticize your girlfriend, give a negative assessment of her actions, and make assumptions about her motives. You permit them to do this, telling the details of your quarrels, letting them into your personal life.
If you love your girlfriend and hope to build a joint future with her, hack it on your nose: no matter how close and dear a person is to you, your relationship is not his business. It doesn’t matter if your loved one acts with the best of intentions; his good intentions can ruin your relationship with your beloved forever.
They infect you with negativity
Each person in a close social circle has those who are always dissatisfied with life, try to shift their responsibility onto someone else, blame others for their problems, and are not going to solve them. You can convince yourself as much as you like that you are not like that, but if you often contact negative people, you will soon begin to notice their features in your behavior.
This does not mean that communication with a negative father or negative friend should be stopped right away. Just try to be more attentive, not adopt the views and values of such people, and evaluate their words as objectively as possible.
They increase stress levels
There is stress in any relationship, especially a lot of it in communicating with loved ones. We don’t notice it just because it also allows us to reboot and rest. The family’s requests that you forgot about, the understanding that you do not have time to fulfill the promised, numerous favors, and joint plans that you will find out about at the last moment.
All of this only increases stress levels. You do not want to offend any of your loved ones, so you frantically try to do everything. The main thing is not to forget about the most important thing – about obligations to oneself.
They criticize you and your actions
Unsolicited criticism is just as bad from strangers as from those you trust. Close people more than others should understand that you will ask them for advice and their opinions when it really will be needed.
But it turns out that your family and friends are always happy to give you an unsolicited comment. Again, they do it out of good intentions, but this does not mean that their criticism does not harm you. You lose confidence in yourself, and the results of your labors suffer greatly from this.
They compare you to others
Parents often sin this: they compare you with your classmates, classmates, sons of mother’s friends, and father’s acquaintances. Moreover, this comparison is almost always not in your favor. In the end, you start to doubt that you are indeed a worthy person who can achieve success, meet your family’s expectations, and be proud of yourself.
A loved one can also compare you with others. Neighbors who made a cool repair, acquaintances who bought a new car, colleagues who received a long-awaited promotion or went on vacation overseas. If you are constantly faced with comparisons, then there can be no talk of any happy life. In the near future, you will begin to feel constant irritation, resentment, and dissatisfaction with yourself.
They try to guide you on the right path
Relatives demand from you immediate replenishment, friends can’t wait to be able to take a walk at your wedding, and the girl persuades you to change your job to a more prestigious, albeit unloved one. It seems that all these people want the best for you, but it often turns out quite the opposite.
When you do as they advise you, you get a positive response, but you remain unhappy because you are going against yourself or rushing things. If you want to build the life of your dreams, you need to get used to listening only to yourself and no one else. You can listen to the opinion of others but not take it for the absolute truth.
