#7. The nullifiers.
Yes, I know. It sounds very radical to move away from people. And it’s contradictory because the purpose of spirituality is to bring people together, not to pit them against each other.
But there will be time for that.
What you can’t do is try to save others without saving yourself first. It’s like trying to help someone complete their first marathon when you’re just learning to run twenty minutes without choking.
So, if you want good advice and want to evolve spiritually (and when you do, help others), avoid these seven types of people.
- The coupled ones. I call this the new people who come into your life without warning and take confidence with you quickly. A trust that you have not given them at any time. These people use your goodness against you. These people come into your life reeking of desperation (even if they try to hide it), and they have an urgency: use you as a Toilet and fill your life with shit, to see if you can clean it while you are cleaning yours.
- The examiners. Those who examine you in every interaction you have with them. The problem with “The Examiners” is that everything looks bad to them no matter what you do; they have already decided that you will fail their tests and exams beforehand. But they love to challenge you to become an attention junkie. Please don’t fall into their traps. It’s futile to try to connect with them. Trying to do so makes you feel like a tightrope walker whose safety net has been removed after being asked to walk a tightrope. These people don’t want to see you grow spiritually (walk the tightrope). They want to see you fall.
- The naysayers. These are the people who specialize in opposing you on everything. People who can’t stand to see you change or that you have the reason from time to time because that would make you look like a valid person in front of others. Their purpose is to prove to everyone that you are a fraud. They are vigilantes who can’t stand to see you look good because, in their opinion, you don’t deserve to be happy. These people believe they are the bearers of truth (they also think that their shit doesn’t smell :-). And they spend their lives imposing their view of things on others, including their opinion of you.
- The emotional saboteurs. Believe it or not, some people enjoy pitting people against each other more than a kid in the eighties separating the wings of a fly or burning ants with a magnifying glass. These people not only throw a stone and hide their hand but also point the finger at you and tell others that you threw the stone. These people do not tremble when it comes to lying or manipulating; for them, the end always justifies the means. These people feel no remorse for the consequences of their actions — damaging your image, alienating you from your loved ones, or that you don’t know it’s true because they have brought you into their world of lies — on the contrary, they enjoy seeing you face those consequences.
- Canine educators. These types of people perceive themselves as professors at the university of life. But they are not simple know-it-alls. These people not only want you to know that they know more than you, they want to re-educate you to be the way they think you should be. And to do so, just like the famous dog educator César Millán, they do not hesitate to subtly put you in reward-punishment dynamics to modify your behavior.
- The time machines. This is what I call people who have the strange power to take you back to previous stages of your life in which you felt terrible. A typical example is that schoolmate or cousin (even an ex-partner) who, every time you meet, tries to irritate you by using words or nicknames that people used to call you in other stages of your life to activate your emotional buttons and get on your nerves. These people act like puppeteers and intend to pull your strings to bolster their ego by proving to themselves that they still have some emotional power over you.
- The nullifiers. These people go a thousand steps further than “the negatives.” They only highlight your flaws and, in their defense, tell you it’s for your good to make you better. If you were a rock star these people would go to your concerts and at the end instead of congratulating you for having filled a soccer stadium they would tell you, “the stadium was not full at all, I counted 30 empty seats”. These people inoculate you with the virus of perfectionism, and then you delay everything you want to undertake for fear of not living up to the standard they expect you to be.
Takeaway
My grandfather always told me, “If you want to change your life, start by changing your friends.”
And he was right because the people with whom you have the most relationships have the most access to you, and that access can do you good or a lot of harm.
And if you are in that moment in which you feel the spiritual call because you need to change your life, the first thing you have to do is edit your friendships.
And restrict your contact with people, anchoring you to that version of yourself you no longer want to be to the minimum. Later on, when you are a better version of yourself, you could re-expose yourself to those people without being affected to help them.
But first, you have to save yourself. Don’t forget that.
A virtual hug
AG