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Managing the Impact People Have on Your Life: A Casual, Surreal Guide to Maintaining Your Inner Peace
Have you ever been around someone and instantly felt your mood shift—like they walked in with a whole emotional thunderstorm you didn’t sign up for? Yeah… we’ve all been there. People have a way of brushing up against our energy, sometimes gently, sometimes not so gently. And the truth is, we can’t control how others show up—but we can control how we respond, how much access they get, and how we protect our peace. In this casual (and slightly surreal) guide, we’re exploring the playful side of managing people’s impact on your life. Think of it as learning the art of emotional boundaries with a touch of humor, a dash of mindfulness, and a sprinkle of “I choose peace today, not chaos.” We’ll look at how to: ✨ Protect your energy without becoming cold or disconnected ✨ Stay grounded when someone else’s emotions feel like a tornado ✨ Create inner space through small habits like quiet time, breathwork, or stepping outside for air ✨ Let go of guilt and choose what truly feels peaceful ✨ Keep your joy—even when someone else’s negativity is trying to rent space in your mind Life gets a lot easier when you stop absorbing everything around you and start observing instead. This is your reminder that your peace is worth defending, your energy is worth guarding, and you deserve a life that feels like soft mornings—not emotional chaos.
SELF-CARE & WELLNESS
11/15/202510 min read
It’s funny, isn’t it?
We grow up being told that we should “just be ourselves,” as if that’s some simple little recipe handed to us at birth—take one cup of personality, sprinkle in a pinch of passions, whisk with dreams, and voilà: identity. But then we step into the world and almost immediately learn that we don’t live in some isolated pod floating freely through life. No, we live among people—crowds of them—each carrying their own swirling mix of desires, assumptions, judgments, fears, and well-meaning (sometimes not-so-well-meaning) advice. And those people? They have opinions. About us. About how we should live, what we should want, how we should speak, who we should love, what our dreams should look like, and exactly how loud or quiet we should be while chasing them. Even when we didn’t ask.
The truth is simple but annoying: we do not live in a bubble, so people will inevitably influence us.
It’s human nature to observe, compare, comment, and occasionally meddle. It’s also human nature to crave belonging, which sometimes makes us fold ourselves into shapes that don’t fit, just to keep the peace. So the real question becomes: How do we manage the impact people have on our lives without losing ourselves in the process? And not in some rigid, self-help-guru-on-a-stage kind of way—I’m talking about realistically, humanly, casually, imperfectly. Because managing influence isn’t about building walls or swearing off society. It’s about becoming a skilled gatekeeper of your inner world, deciding what gets to enter, what stays outside, and what gets tossed into the recycling bin for further processing. Let’s walk through this together—slowly, honestly, and with a touch of surreal imagination—because sometimes the best way to understand real life is to deliver it with a twist. 1.
The Constant Stream of Influences: You Can’t Stop the Water, But You Can Learn to Navigate It
Imagine your life as this wide, flowing river. Very calm in some places, a little rapid in others. As you drift along, people toss things into your water all the time. Advice. Opinions. Expectations. Judgments. Compliments. Warnings. Criticism. Encouragement. Random comments that somehow live rent-free in your head for five years. Some things float peacefully by—no impact. Some try to attach themselves like vines. Some sink immediately and never matter again. And some… well, some hit you like someone just launched a refrigerator into your personal river. The key here is acceptance: You can’t prevent people from tossing things into your river. You can only decide what you pick up. This realization alone brings so much freedom. Truly. Imagine looking at someone’s unsolicited advice drifting toward you like a rubber duck and saying, “Oh. That’s cute,” and then watching it just continue floating downstream. But it takes practice. Repetition. Awareness. Most importantly, it takes honesty with yourself. 2. Assess Everything That Enters Your Life (Yes, Everything) This is the part where you become the wise, slightly eccentric gatekeeper of your own mental universe. Every influence—big or small—deserves a moment of examination. Not a long interrogation, not a dramatic courtroom trial, just a simple pause: Is this helpful? Is this harmful? Does this align with my values? Is this trying to steer me away from myself? Is this meant for me or is it simply someone projecting their own fears or desires? And here’s where things can take a surreal turn. Imagine every opinion someone gives you materializing as a glowing orb in your hand. Some orbs pulse with warm, golden light—encouragement, insight, genuine support. Others flicker erratically—fear disguised as advice. And some? They’re just plain grey. Lifeless. Heavy. More like a stone than an orb. Your job is to decide which ones you keep and which ones you gently drop into the bottomless pit of “No, thank you.” Some people might say this sounds too simple. But sometimes simple is powerful. Because so often we let our lives be shaped by influences we never consciously evaluated. A teacher’s passing comment. A parent’s fear-based warning. A friend’s assumption about what happiness should look like. We carry these things as if we chose them, when really they chose us. It’s time to flip that dynamic. 3. The
Tough Decisions: Acceptance or Rejection Here’s the heart of it: Not everything that enters your life is beneficial, and not everything deserves to stay. And that’s tough. Because humans are wired for connection, and rejecting someone’s influence can feel like rejecting them. But you’re not rejecting the person—you’re rejecting the weight they tried to hand you that doesn’t belong in your pack. Think of your life like a long journey across different terrains. Every influence you accept becomes part of your backpack. Some things are tools. Some are snacks. Some are rocks. Carrying rocks for the sake of politeness doesn’t make the mountain any easier to climb. You’re allowed to say: “I love you, but that’s not advice I need.” “I hear you, but it doesn’t resonate with me.” “Thank you, but that perspective isn’t mine.” “I understand why you think that, but I’m choosing differently.” Rejection doesn’t have to be harsh. It just needs to be intentional. 4. You Can Only Control Your Gatekeeping, Not Their Talking People will always talk. They will always have an opinion. They will always offer advice—even when you’re just standing there, minding your own business, holding a sandwich. This is human nature. Humans comment. Humans compare. Humans narrate their own internal stories and accidentally project them onto you. Trying to prevent people from having opinions is like trying to stop the clouds from moving. Futile, exhausting, and a waste of your incredible energy. Your power doesn’t lie in stopping the noise—it lies in controlling the volume you allow it to have. Some opinions deserve the TV muted. Some deserve captions only. Some deserve a cautious listen. And some deserve the whole surround-sound system. But you choose. Not them. 5. The Surreal Side: Turning Your Mind Into a Curated Garden Here’s a more imaginative way to think about managing influence—because sometimes metaphor makes truth easier to swallow. Imagine your inner world as a massive garden, stretching endlessly in all directions. The soil is your identity. The plants are your beliefs, habits, dreams, boundaries. And the people around you? They’re wanderers who occasionally stroll in, carrying seeds. They drop seeds—intentionally or not. Some seeds grow into towering trees that give you confidence, clarity, and shade on difficult days. Some sprout into stubborn weeds that wrap around your thoughts, tightening and tightening until you forget who planted them in the first place. You can’t stop people from dropping seeds. But you’re in charge of the garden. You decide: What gets watered What gets uprooted What gets composted What gets built into something new Managing influence is caretaking. It’s pruning. It’s planting. It’s weeding. It’s rewilding. It’s intentional, gentle, patient work, and your garden doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. Some people cultivate wild, sprawling jungles of creativity. Others prefer tidy paths and well-trimmed hedges. Some mix order and chaos into something breathtaking. The point is: it’s your garden, always. 6. Protecting Your Inner Space Without Becoming Cynical One of the biggest fears people have when learning to reject unhealthy influence is this: “Am I becoming cold or closed off?” But protecting your peace doesn’t make you cold. Setting boundaries doesn’t make you unkind. Rejecting someone’s harmful influence doesn’t mean you love them any less. It simply means you love yourself, too. Think of it like having a house with doors and windows. You’re not building a concrete bunker. You’re installing functional entry points. People can knock. You decide whether to let them in, and once they’re inside, you decide which rooms they have access to. Some people get the whole house. Some get the living room. Some get the porch. Some get no closer than the barbecue grill out back. Not out of cruelty. Out of wisdom, 7.
Becoming Immune to Projection (Spoiler: It’s a Lifelong Skill) One of the most liberating things you will ever learn is this: Most people’s opinions about you have nothing to do with you.
They are reacting to: their own fears their own insecurities their own regrets their own values their own experiences their own unhealed wounds People project. It’s one of the most common human behaviors. Someone afraid to take risks might call your dream “unrealistic.” Someone resentful of their own choices might call your happiness “naive.” Someone who feels stuck might mock your ambition. It’s not you. It’s them. Their story leaking into yours. And once you understand this, suddenly every comment, judgment, or unsolicited opinion becomes simply: data. Data you don’t have to adopt. 8. The Art of Remaining Open While Staying Grounded Here’s the balance: You don’t want to shut out all influence. Some of it is good—life-changing, even. Mentors, friends, strangers, experiences, stories—all these things can shift our perspective in beautiful ways. Openness is a strength. But grounded openness? That’s mastery. Being grounded means you: know your values know your boundaries know your goals know your worth know your voice When you’re grounded, influence doesn’t topple you; it shapes you intentionally. It becomes more like a gentle breeze than a hurricane. You can say, “Hmm, I’ll consider that,” and mean it. Without bending yourself into confusion. Without losing your inner compass. 9. Choosing What You Permit and What You Toss Aside At the end of the day, managing influence comes down to choice. Conscious, courageous, consistent choice.
You get to decide: Whose voices matter ? Whose doesn’t? What ideas stay? What gets tossed? What deserves attention?ion Wh?at deserves silence You?’re not powerless. You’re not a passive receiver. You’re the editor of your own story, the curator of your own museum, the DJ of your own mental playlist. And just like any good playlist, sometimes you need to skip the song that doesn’t fit the mood 10. The Final Word: You Are the Author, Not the Audience. People will always talk. They always advise, but will they always interpret your life through their own lens. My friend, are they the one holding the pen. You decide which influences become plot points, and which one become footnotes? Which gets written out entirely, and which helps shape the next beautiful chapter of your life. Your job isn’t to stop the world from speaking. Your job is to keep your inner world in harmony—carefully, casually, intentionally because managing influence is not about isolation, but It’s about sovereignty. It’s about clarity. It’s about protecting the space where your true self lives and grows. You don’t live in a bubble, but you do live in a life that is? entirely yours. And that? That makes you the most powerful person in the story.