The people you surround yourself with makes an impression on you and dictates what others think about you. Whether that image people see of you is good or bad, it matters.
When deciding who you want to hang out with, the better choice to make is someone who wants the best for you, makes you happy, inspires you and motivates you to do the best you can compared to someone who might bring you down, be unsupportive, make you a mean person or influence you to do things like drink, smoke or drugs.
So many of my friends have hung out with the wrong people and ended up doing stuff they would normally never do.
Now you’re probably thinking everyone makes their own choices, which is absolutely true, but a lot of kids and teenagers specifically don’t have a lot of self-control. So when teenagers hang out with friends who treat others unkindly, smoke, drink or anything else, that is not something they should be doing. It’s natural that we will feel pressured to do the same as our friends. What you need during these situations is have self-control, and if you don’t have self-control, maybe you should choose to hang out with different people.
If you are hanging out with someone who does something you’re not really comfortable doing, but you still feel like you need to do it because you want to be their friend, a good thing to do is tell them you don’t feel comfortable with it and ask them to stop or not do it around you. If they are a good friend, they will listen and at least try to understand you. If they get angry with you or ignore you and don’t listen, that’s not what a good friend does, and you should distance yourself from them.
You will feel a difference from surrounding yourself with the right and wrong people.
Positive people lift you up and motivate you to be the best version of yourself. Usually, when you are with the right people and friends who treat you with respect and kindness, you will feel good and you want to keep hanging out with them.
Whereas, negative people will bring you down and usually make you the worst version of yourself. When with the wrong people, sometimes you will feel pressured to do something you know is not something you should be doing. They may not treat you right and hurt your feelings a lot.
In my personal experience, after hanging out with negative people, I feel regret and like maybe I shouldn’t hang out with them again.
If you want to know how to be a better person, a good suggestion is surrounding yourself with people who are better than you. Maybe they are smarter or more successful and talented because doing so well motivate you to be better and want to do better for yourself.
