Monday Motivation: How We Need to Lift Each Other Up, and Eliminate Toxicity in our Lives.
Paul Stallings
Part-time Game Advisor and Tennis Shop Manager. Following my passions.
Good Morning everyone!
So after a very stressful week, I decided to start off this week with a very informative Motivation Monday.
I’d like to start this Monday Motivation by posting this cool YouTube Short.
I like watching these kinds of shorts. This particular clip shows a boy trying to go as high as he can on a trampoline. His friends jump on the trampoline as he lands to help him go higher. This kind of short is very symbolic of how we need our friends to lift us up. Having a positive, and motivating friend/work group is necessary for us, as we need that positive affirmation to keep us going and working towards our goals.
There’s a video that Will Smith (yes, the same Will Smith that slapped Chris Rock for joking about Jada being bald.) posted years before the infamous Oscars Slap, where he talks about having people in your life to fan your flames. I definitely agree with that statement, because we all have dreams and goals, and we need those kinds of people to motivate and push us towards those goals. Who are those people in your life fanning your flames? For me, it’s my family, friends and mentor-figures. They motivate me each day, and because of them, I’ve found that motivation to want to go back to school and finish my degree, as well as continuing to strive at being a better tennis player, and overall, a better person.
Now, let’s switch gears and look at the other side of things. We have people in our lives who build us up, now what about the ones who bring us down. Unfortunately, we deal with toxicity in our lives on a daily basis. Whether it is people we run into, people we’ve befriended, or even ourselves. It’s also how we confront it, and how we deal with it. One of my favorite quotes is that if someone goes low, we go high. I always try to live by that mentality. If someone is going to call me out as being dumb, ridiculous, incompetent or a failure. Or if someone tries to say or do something to bring me down, I let them believe what they want, and I don’t stoop to their level to get even, because at the end of the day, I know my own worth.
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In fact, here’s a story. This is about a former colleague of mine. Let's call him Taylor. Taylor often had a habit of bringing others around him down just to build himself up, and would only show positive affirmation for others just for his own satisfaction. In fact, working here, he had put me down a lot, just so he could get ahead. It was because of those behaviors that I eventually ended things between us, because I didn’t need someone like him in my life. My friends and colleagues saw it, but I was blind to it, and had to realize it myself. And I am glad I finally did. Because I have less of that negativity in my life, and I never needed his approval.
Now, we’ve all been toxic ourselves. I can admit to it, as I was being toxic last week. It took outside influence for me to realize it, and I am working to eliminate those behaviors. That is how we grow as people. If we’re being toxic ourselves, we have to figure out why we’re being toxic, and how we can learn to be better and less toxic, eliminate that toxicity and grow from it.
This link is a playlist I put together from three videos on Venus Williams’s YouTube Channel about eliminating toxicity. For those who do not know, Venus Williams is a professional tennis player and 7-time Grand Slam Champion, and the older sister of 23-time Grand Champion, Serena Williams. Venus has definitely been a huge role model in my life, and I hope watching these videos will motivate and inspire you too.
Anyway, that concludes my Monday Motivation, and let’s start this week off right! Remember that you have people in your life to build you up, and don’t let the toxic people bring you down!