The hardest part of moving forward is getting rid of all the things in your life that are damaging. That does include people.

The people that you choose to be around should be uplifting your spirit, not damning it.  Your friends should be kind, considerate, hopeful for your future, happy to share themselves and new experiences with you. Friends shouldn’t be damning, mooching leeches. Period. All of your relationships should benefit the persons involved so that means you also have to contribute. It is your moral and spiritual responsibility to feed your soul and feed the souls of the one around you.

With that being said, every year or so you need to go through a cleansing process and what that means is that you should examine all of the friendships, relationships and connections that you have upheld. If there is no growth in your relationship then that probably means that 1. Either none of the parties are contributing to the connection and it is stagnant or 2. Only one person is contributing so it is completely one sided and only beneficial to one person; regardless its something that should be allowed to come to an end rather than struggle on with no progress in sight.

I also go through my phone and make sure that everyone has a purpose for being a “Contact”.  If you’re not business related or family and I haven’t called, texted or BBM’d you over the last 6 months then chances are you will be removed. I don’t like to have a lot of contacts in my phone that I can’t call. I still only have one or two people that I could call in case of emergency other than my SO and family members…so that’s rough but keeping the name in your phone won’t change the relationship unless both parties are willing to put in the effort.

I think cleansing is good for the soul. I think cleansing helps us re-organize our priorities and come to realizations about our selves and the type of relationships we encourage. I advise my 1-5 readers to try it out if you don’t already have a system and I invite you to share your thoughts on the process.