Am I a toxic person?: How to practice mindfulness

So a couple of weeks back, I asked some of my followers on what topic they'd like me to write about and one of the questions I got was this:

"How do I know if I'm a toxic person? How can I avoid being toxic?"

I found it interesting because a lot of people don't ever ask themselves that question. Often times we're looking for "how to deal with toxic people" but not so much about "how can I avoid being a toxic person".

So how do you know if you're a toxic person? Well to start off, what do we mean by "toxic person"?

Here's a list of some common signs:

1. They try to control you by guilt tripping.

Common phrases most probably used is "Uy sis, favor. Cge na. Friends bitaw ta.", even though they know that what they're asking you to do is probably inconvenient or annoying for you. They can't take "no" and instead say things like "I've done so much for you and you can't even do me a favor." True friends know their boundaries.

2. They constantly see themselves as a victim and love throwing a pity party.

Well, it's okay to vent out about a few things and share your sentiments on life, but trying to elicit pity and sympathy from other people by constantly whining is not healthy at all.  They will even make it sound like they're being mistreated and misunderstood  ALL the time.

3. They are self-absorbed.

They love talking about themselves and their life without minding to ask about how other people are doing. They are always seeking approval and any person whom they notice disagreeing with them gets tagged as "a bad friend". Then the cycle of acting as a victim starts and they start announcing to everyone their feeling of "na-hurt jud ko" or "na-offend jud ko".

There are plenty more examples and signs that a person is toxic but for the rest of this post I'd like to focus more on how we can avoid being a toxic person. More specifically, how can we recognize our toxic traits and work them out.

Here's how I did it:  I practiced mindfulness.

Towards the end of 2017, due to some of the things I experienced around that time, I decided I wanted to start out on a mindfulness journey. I'd jot down on a journal my thoughts and insights for that day. It wasn't like a dear diary thing but more of like "what did I learn about myself today" or "what did I get from today that may be useful for me to look back to in the future". It was a log of my emotions, my actions/reactions,  and my realizations for that day. I wanted to be intentional in knowing and understanding myself more. It was like evaluating myself on a more objective level.

What are the things that hurt me? What makes me upset?  What makes me angry? Is it right for me to react in that manner? What do I think about when this type of situation occurs?  How do I react to certain things? What do I think about money, wealth, career, social media, love, family? What are the things that make me feel more in tune with myself? 

It may sound easy but I tell you, it's hard to be honest with yourself at times. We all have toxic traits. Sometimes you don't want to admit that you were being unreasonable that day, or you don't want to admit to your bad habits.

It takes a lot of strength to acknowledge our weaknesses.

Once you start getting better at being honest with yourself, that's when you're ready to commit to changes. You're more aware of yourself now. You know yourself better. You know how to make yourself better. You can easily notice yourself if you're starting to get back to being toxic or immature again.

I could've easily listed some do's and don'ts on how to avoid being a toxic person. But I think that's just more of a band-aid solution compared to truly practicing self-awareness. How shallow it would be to just constantly check yourself based on a certain set of "rules".

Self-awareness is important if you want to succeed

It's not just about being toxic or not. It's also about the long-term benefits from practicing self-awareness.

It's hard to keep pursuing for bigger, better things when we don't have a strong sense of who we really are. In the long run, we can get easily confused and derailed if we don't develop our self-awareness first. 

From self-awareness, you can build accountability, authenticity,  and discipline.

When you start to develop those traits, you are definitely preparing yourself for long-term success.

                     "I rediscover myself at every turn. And that is what's most interesting in life."

Hope 2020 gets better for all of us! Don't make it harder for others by staying a toxic person this year! Do better than that! 😜

Love,

Lora 💖