Your Surrounding and you - not a Mirror but mutual Influence

If you have been around in the spiritual scene or are interested in self-improvement books and the like, you must have already read or heard the theory according to which others are showing you a mirror of yourself. While this theory is often taken very far – to my taste at times too far – there is also a good part of truth in there. Simply for one reason: when we are in a group or among other people, we easily adjust our own behavior and get more similar to those around us. Obviously, we should take care what kind of attitude we accept and which we do not!

You may or may not have noticed this yourself. You spend a part of your day at your work, a part of your day with your family and maybe another part of your day with friends. You thus probably have two to three different groups of people around you – and you probably not only act differently around them due to the nature of time you spend together but also because they act differently and you adapted your own behavior.

If the attitude in your office is a rather negative one for example, you will find your coworkers complaining a lot. At the point when you notice that, you may also catch yourself doing the same thing! Why? Because this is the group dynamic at your work place! In a group, we want to be accepted and so, without necessarily doing it consciously, we imitate others. They complain? We do as well. And with negativity, this can easily become a downward spiral! Once you notice, you can say that they are mirroring you – or you can say you adapted. In any case, you should try to be more positive.

The same thing happens in positive way! If you are around positive people, you cannot avoid being influenced by them. It is so much easier to be positive if the ones around you are! Making jokes, laughing, enjoying your time – it is best around people who do that, too!

This does not only mean that others have an influence on you and it also doesn’t mean that you are horribly negative if you meet a very negative person. It means that you, too, have a strong impact on those around you, especially those with whom you spend a lot of time in a day!

So no matter if you are at work, at home or spending time with your friends – focus on being positive and thus influence the people around you instead of adapting to their negativity!