I’d like to think of myself as something of a social butterfly, befriending anyone who crosses my path. I love talking to new people and hearing about their personal stories—it’s precisely why I’m studying to be a journalist. However, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that I don’t need to be friends with everyone I meet. In fact, I probably shouldn’t be.
Introspection and age have allowed me to realize that much of my own over-friendly personality has stemmed from a fear of being labeled an angry Black woman, and I will not continue making myself palatable for the approval of others.
Recently, we’ve all began trying to harness our main character energy; romanticizing our lives, putting ourselves first and protecting our energy from anything that doesn’t serve us. Why do we exclude toxicity from friends from this agenda?
Let me start by saying you absolutely can not judge a book by its cover, and I’m not suggesting you should. Your first impression of someone is important and typically unforgettable, but humans are complex beings. You’ll never get a full picture of anyone the first time you meet. We’ve all had sh*tty first impressions, and I refuse to imagine the embarrassing things people might have thought about me during any brief interaction. Being open to meeting new people means exactly that: being open. However, ignoring red flags and your instincts closes you off from your intuition.
Anyone trying to harness their main character energy needs to tap all the way into their intitution and start trusting their divine wisdom as what it is: divine. To reject this internal gift and guide means to purposefully accept that which does not serve you. We keep talking about the importance of protecting our own energy, but how often do we actually make the hard decisions that help maintain our mental health? How often do we really cut out the friends that we know bring negative energy into our lives? How can we expect ourselves to boss up and become the women we want to be when we continue to surround ourselves with those who wish to stay stagnant?
To quote my mother, who is probably quoting someone even wiser than she: if you’re the best ____ in the room, you need to find a new room. There is absolutely no growth in being surrounded by others without the same ambition, intellect and goals as you, so use your charm and generosity to attract like-minded people to you. At the end of the day, not everyone you meet is going to be like you. Not everyone was raised the same as you, and even friends with good intentions might go about achieving similar goals in negative ways. Not everyone you meet is going to like you. Hell, you don’t even like everyone you meet. You don’t need to hang out with every person. Some people in your life only exist to teach you a lesson, and sometimes you just need to be a good student and learn it.
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