 Last month was all about relationships. In part one of the toolbox, we dove into the science behind our social networks, the massive influence they have on us, and what we can do to start to shape them to our benefit. Part two of that toolbox last month, we looked at three different types of relationships – platonic, romantic, and professional. And we gave you tips on how to get the most out of each one of those categories of relationships. And we had a chat with positive psychology expert Rob Mack and even gave you some Valentine's Day advice. I hope you took Evan Katz's advice and it comes to improving your online dating and having a great Valentine's Day. And as always, we wrapped our month with a Q&A episode of Helena Gutierrez answering your questions about relationships and life in general. Now this month, we're talking about those relationships that we have to lose those toxic relationships. And this is one of our most popular topics in terms of questions that we get and some of the most trafficked blog articles on our site all are around. How do you deal with those people that are unhealthy for us? Yeah, I'm really excited about this month because we get so many questions about it and all of us have had our personal experiences in dealing with toxicity. Evan, it's a high possibility at some point in your life you've been the toxic person. And we want to talk about ways of getting out of that if you are and also being able to recognize it so that you can get away from it. And let's be honest, we were talking about this in the prep. Sometimes that toxicity is going to be overt and obvious and sometimes even malicious. But there's a lot of subversive toxicity here that's going on. It's happening subconsciously that we may not even be recognizing. So we're going to look at why it's difficult to spot this. We're also going to give you two questions to ask yourself to determine if someone is toxic for you. And we're going to go over several clear signs of toxicity. You know, Johnny, we've seen these signs and friends, family, coworkers. It's important to start paying attention to these signals early so that you don't have disastrous outcomes in those relationships. Absolutely. And on top of that, you're never I'm just going to stay with with this. You're never going to fully be able to just rid of toxic toxicity in your life forever. And first of all, you have to learn about it and the forms it comes in because let's face it, toxic people need other people. That's their hope to take, unload their fears and insecurities. So they've managed to put some tools together in order to lure you in. Right. They're pretty good at initially connecting with people because in order for their toxicity to manifest, they need other people to listen, to pay attention to them, to value them, to appreciate these behaviors. And so upon that is that as you get better at identifying them, you will find them less and less in your life. But it doesn't mean you're going to finish running into them. Right. You can't avoid it. You can't avoid it. We're giving you the tools to navigate it. Yes. And here's the thing, if some of these things that we talk about today hit you like a cold bucket of water, we're going to end today's episode in some high value traits you can work towards to remove yourself from being that toxic person in other people's lives. So we have a lot to get to in this toolbox episode. We're very excited. But first, let's just define toxic because in our research, this is really funny. The Oxford Dictionary made the word toxic, the word of 2018, saying it reflects the ethos, mood and preoccupations of the passing year. So a lot happened in society, culture, politics. Toxic tended to be a very big word in 2018. I want to add something to that because as you will see, as we go through the traits of toxic people, they tend to point out how everyone around them tends to be a problem tends to be the problem. So if we have a large population who are throwing this around, hey, it just might be your responsible. Absolutely. And that's I think the cold bucket of water that a lot of people will find themselves in. And I listen, when you're talking about these awful behaviors, if you're any sort of a good human being, you're going to look inward to make sure that you're not exhibiting any of these behaviors as well. That's just natural. And, hey, that's the first steps because if you are, well, of course, you want to fix it. You don't want to be the toxic person. And sometimes toxicity helps you get ahead and you find toxic leaders. We find toxic people in our lives in important roles because they're using other self-doubt to their advantage. Just say, I am. And that's something important to realize that we all feel the self-doubt. But when someone is using that to their advantage, using it against us, they're a pretty toxic person. So first, let's get clear on what we mean by toxic people, because to your point, Johnny, earlier, a lot of people view this as malicious. Like these are dangerous, awful human beings. And this word toxic is synonymous with harm caused on the other person. But a lot of this stuff is a little more nuanced than that. It's not just malicious. Well, it's all these behaviors are on a spectrum. And sociopathy and psychopathy, these are. They are on a spectrum because narcissism, being the farthest one over, psychopaths being on the other end of that. And we all tend to be a bit narcissistic as much as you might not like that word, only because we are self-centered by nature, because the only way that we have to experience anything is through our senses. So that automatically puts us in it. And of course, we know that social media exploits that tendency and need within us. I mean, that's every social media app we have revels in narcissism. But yet we still use that. So let's be honest there. Now, all of us have people in our lives that stand in our way of our progress or our happiness, and when we're trying to better ourselves or solve some of our own problems, they're the first to stand up and push back and force us to make difficult decisions. They will resist us, threaten us, sabotage our efforts at improving ourselves. And they do this for really two reasons. One, by acting on working on yourself and putting some time and effort in to help your health, your career, your relationships, and so on, you are the first to remind them of their own shortcomings. So they see your development as highlighting their inadequacies. Now, I want to dive into that a little bit because there's this this idea that that Carl Jung had put forth where time in itself for all of us as we grow older has a way of pushing us in a certain direction. We have a need and a want to succeed, to to be at the top, to gain resources, to be comfortable. And as we get older, the way we have to approach that has to change because we're not the spry young chickens that we used to be. Now, you can go with the grain or you can go against the grain. You can make the go the easy road or the hard road. Self development is for you to understand yourself, develop yourself so that you can roll with the grain and make life enjoyable and easy for yourself. However, that's when you allow the best parts of yourself to take control and you have to develop those. Whereas your vices, your your insecurities, your fears, if you allow that to take control and that to drive the car. Well, then you're going to be you will be drug against the grain, against your will. And that is the hard road. And when that's happening, the only thing that you can do in that situation is point the finger at others because you don't want the spotlight on you. You don't want the spotlight because everything sucks. Everything is terrible. And in your feeling, so much pain on a daily basis. So in order to leave yourself of that, you drag in other people. You make other people responsible. And now we see the biggest issue that we'll be talking about with this is this victim card that goes so much with toxic people. Yeah. So when we're working on ourselves, we remind them of their own inadequacies. And the easiest thing for them to do is to fight us out of that change instead of to engage in the change themselves. The other side of the coin here is that, listen, if you're working on yourself, there's a pretty high likelihood you're going to succeed in some of this. Yep. Health changes, relationship changes, career changes. And that success is also going to drive them baddie. You got the job you wanted. They no longer share that cubicle with you. Oh, well, I don't want him to leave. I don't want him to succeed, or you get in shape. And now all of a sudden, you're not going to be able to go out with her and have some chicken wings and watch the sports game. You're going to be getting up early to do your workouts. You're going to be changing your routines, which is going to cause them a great degree of discomfort. And I want to also put in there. There's another thing that has nothing to do with maliciousness or even your worst parts of you taking over, which is just age in itself. As you get older, you put routines and habits together that allow you to enjoy life and be successful. Feel good. Yeah. When you're a bit younger, you don't really need those things to feel good because you're still growing. So anything you do just allows you to feel amazing. You can stay out all night, drink all night, wake up in the morning, go to work, have a laugh, and you're fine. And so, you know, if you're trying to get your act together, hanging out with this young person who who has no worries about those things, you can find those behaviors toxic to your development, just from them being them. And there is nothing malicious going on there. They're just young and you have to you have to allow them to do their thing because don't worry, they'll be where you are in a few years. But you have to focus on yourself. And it's always you can always tell the toxic person in the room because they're quick to start bound off about everyone else's problems. And this one, I think we've all encountered. They don't want you to find that significant other, that partner, because you're not going to have time for them anymore. You're serial data friends, wink, wink, who get a little butt hurt when you start going out with someone, when you bring someone else into your life romantically. Well, now they're competing for time and they're going to feel uncomfortable. So to Johnny's point, the spectrum is not just malice. There are toxic behaviors and actions that we're going to outline that run the gamut from trying to directly hurt you to really just struggling with their own discomfort around your change. Now, when we're looking at the bigger picture here, we're not talking about that person who scoffed at you or didn't hold the elevator. We're talking about patterns of behavior here, right? I think this is what trips up a lot of people. Yeah. Immediately we start saying, OK, I got to surround myself with positive people. I got to be happy all the time. And oh, my God, this person slighted me. So now they're toxic. And then all of a sudden we start writing people off. What we're talking about here. And when we go through these different identifiers, we're looking for patterns of behavior. Allow everyone to have a bad day. Allow everyone to have a bad week. But if this pattern continues and all of your efforts to reorient the conversation, all of your efforts to explain and rationalize why you need to be taking these actions fall on deaf ears. Well, now we got to start making some changes. It's funny, I saw a comment today in our challenge group by somebody who was dealing with this problem. And I said, oh, you're in luck because that's what we're doing this month. And we'll be recording that first episode today. But she's the word of her friend, her friend's drama, as it always seems to be on replay. It's the same movie over and over again. And I was laughing like that's a great word for it because it does seem like it's the same movie over and over again. And we always we don't say replay. We go, oh, I've seen this movie before. I know how this movie goes. And I've seen the ending. It's not fun. So understanding and recognizing these patterns allow you to change your own behavior and stop spending and investing time in people that are trying to do you harm. Now, the other thing we want to talk about is that toxicity is context dependent. Right. So we're always looking at the context just because someone's toxic for person A doesn't mean they're toxic for person B. Yeah. Person B can allow them to feel comfortable and might actually fit a lot of these behaviors that they're looking for. So there are going to be times where someone in your life may not be a good fit for you, but that doesn't mean that you have to write them off from the population. I know a lot of times when it comes to our exes, we try to rewrite the story in dramatic terms and orient them as this awful person. But toxic people, there are people that they gel with. There are people that they're toxic for. And I think you mentioned it there is at one time of crossing paths, you've might have been perfect for each other. And that's what I think where people get so weirded out about because they feel I've been with this monster this whole time and didn't know it. There's a possibility of that. I think a higher possibility is that when you had first met, you all were very much alike and your paths had crossed paths. And that intersection was there. But for very long, as you kept growing in each direction, exactly in other directions, it gets farther and farther apart. So by the time that's relationship that probably should have ended a while ago, finally does. Well, yeah, it's been maybe you've been together five years and maybe the toxicity was two of those years, right? Like because we've there's so much invested. Why would you want that to lose? And of course, you always think, well, I can change that person, but they need they have to want to be. Yeah, there's a certain comfort that goes along with growing together. And and obviously, when we talk about removing toxic people from our lives, the biggest reason people email us or write in our challenge group about this is because they know there's going to be some fallout. They know that there's going to be an impact and discomfort on their own lives, which is why they're unsure about making this decision about cutting this toxic person out. You know, it's funny thinking back about some people in my life that I had identified as toxic. And one of the first questions I get asked is like, oh, well, why are you friends with that person? Or why did you go out with that person? And we don't often realize that to your point earlier, as we're growing and changing, especially when we're talking our teens and our 20s and our 30s, we're developing into new individuals. We're taking on new passions and new likes and dislikes and maybe even having massive career changes. So to say that, oh, well, that person is just toxic for everyone or to beat yourself up because you let a toxic person into your life. We have to give a little self compassion here and realize that sometimes we're not great at making good decisions, but also sometimes we just grow in different directions. And that's going to play a role in the later part when it talks about people tend to beat themselves up that they let somebody so horrible in their lives and wreck it. And even when it comes to the worst of people, just someone who does want and to cause malicious harm to others. You know, the the the traits, habits and lures that they had worked to bring you in work very easily. And and of course, as we mentioned, once you're in it, you're trying to change another person you're invested in. Though the more you continue to try to fix the worse it gets because you think I'm smart, I can fix this. But we'll we'll get into that later. That's good stuff. Now, if you want to decide if a person is toxic for you, there are two simple questions that we can ask ourselves. And the first question is, is that person adding happiness to my life? And be honest with yourself, it should be a fairly easy question to answer. We should all have a good gauge for what our happiness is. And if you remember from our theme in January of happiness, we pointed out that happiness breaks down into pleasure and purpose. So understanding both of those peas, does this person provide pleasure and purpose in my life? Do they align with my purpose? Do they allow me to feel the pleasure that I drive from life? That's the first way to orient yourself and determine whether or not this person might be toxic for you. Now, this includes your friends who you hang out with, watch the game. This also includes your workout, buddy, who pushes you to get a couple extra reps in. Or this could be your co-workers who obviously you're spending a lot of time with. Sometimes we see it as our purpose to help the other person. And that has its place in friendship. But can also be a slippery slope, right? If all we're doing is spinning our wheels and we're not happy because all we're trying to do is comfort the other person and help this toxic person. You can see how that takes us off course and certainly doesn't align with our overall purpose. So you don't want your purpose to be defined by this other person. That's the definition of co-dependency. Yep. Now, here's the caveat that if that is all we do listening to other persons struggles and pains while they're utterly unresponsive to our help. Well, they're not showing any willingness to change either. You can see how they're an energy vampire. Yes, right? You can see how that person is just taking and taking and taking. So this should be a relatively obvious question to answer. The second question you can ask yourself is, is this person accepting of my values and goals? This is where a lot of that toxicity is going to present itself. If all of a sudden you're excited and fired up about the keto diet or you're super fired up to learn a guitar and your friend is like, why are you doing that? We've got a fortnight to play tonight. I don't understand. I'm ordering the pizza. We're doing the same thing as always. And you start to see this pattern over and over again. You're going to start to realize that, hey, maybe this person isn't aligning with my goals and my values. Johnny and I are friends. We don't share the same interests and certainly don't always have the same values. It's allowing Johnny to have his values and his views freely, right? Not trying to control them or project my own values onto him. So there are plenty of things that we disagree about. And I think that is where some of us start to struggle because we just look for alignment and overlap in values. And that's not what we're talking about here. And I think once again, we have to play this technology card where we see these argument arguments online over stupid stuff. It's like, why can't people have different ideas? But once again, it goes, well, if your idea is different than mine, then I think you obviously have a problem with my idea. My idea is better than yours. And now here we go. We're worth a right. Black and white thinking does this again. Yes. Now, we also want to allow ourselves to be supportive of others, right? So when we ask ourselves these two questions, I want you to think about how your friends might answer with you. Right. So if you were to ask your best friend, hey, does AJ add happiness to my life? What is your best friend's response going to be? Hopefully it is. Yes. AJ is supportive. AJ adds happiness to my life. If not, you as we started the show with might be the toxic person in this relationship. So that's something that we wanted to point out before we get into these seven signs, because a lot of us are just trying to get comfortable, are just trying to hold on to the relationships in our lives. And sometimes we're subconsciously sabotaging people around us. We're holding them back. We're judging them harshly for their values, aspirations and ultimately goals. And also when it comes to self development, you know, I would say a good portion of the population. Most people don't want to get into it because in order to get into it, you have to admit your flawed. And if you admit your flawed and you have to admit that at times you've probably been screwed up and hurt some people and hurt some people. You've been the toxic person. But that's if you're listening to the show, well, then that's great, because that means that you've come to that conclusion that you could be better. And if you could be, if you can get better, then you're on the starting ground. You're to to begin the work to start enjoying every minute of every day. And it's a wonderful place to be. Now, these seven signs, some will be obvious and you're going to be sitting in your car, sitting on the subway, nodding your head. Some of them might shock you a little bit of like, oh, wow, I didn't realize that. So the first one I want to talk about is they try to control you. People who aren't in control of their own lives try to find control elsewhere and exert some power elsewhere. So the first step they're going to look at is how can I control and manipulate you? And sometimes they're overt methods of manipulation. Sometimes they're subvert, like gaslighting, like reorienting a reality around you and allowing you to second guess your own reality. Yeah, but I've been there. You know, it doesn't feel too good. It certainly doesn't start questioning your own sanity. You start questioning your memory, you know, and it's it's what's good. What is great about this? And I love this because as we go through all these, we're all going to look at times where maybe maybe we've realized that. And maybe at some of these things, you're going to realize that you're in it right now, which is great because you could save yourself some hassle when we talk about getting out of these situations. But with that, once you learn it, right, then next time you ask yourself somebody's questions like, wait a minute, am I going crazy? You'll go rather than going in. Go Edward and start going. You are going crazy. Wait a minute now. I've seen this movie before. All right. And then you're like, wait a minute, I'm not crazy. Somebody is trying to make me think that I'm crazy. And there is a reason why. And of course that reason is to control. And, you know, we see this a lot where in order for everyone to orient themselves to the world around them, they have to build narratives that allow them to feel safe. Those narratives, those how the story that they tell themselves about how things work allows them to feel safe. And so when they see things that don't fit that narrative, they get kind of baddie. And then that's where they want to control you. The power struggle to fix that. And they will even put words in your mouth that you didn't say because the things that you said doesn't fit their narrative. But the words that they put in your mouth certainly does. And you're like, wait a minute. And you could tell these people over and over again, and they just won't change it, won't change. Then they won't admit it. No. And that's the one we're going to talk about a little bit later here. And the controlling could be anything from demanding your password on your devices, it could be changing the playback of the memory that you have with your friends. Oh, that's a good one there. It can also be something as simple as being the one who has to always be in control of the scheduling and the itinerary or always in control of the bill at the end of the night. I've had people who will grab the bill, pay it. And then without even giving you an opportunity to figure out tip and figure out what was on the bill, just boom, send you a Venmo request. This controlling behavior, again, is coming from a place where they're lacking control in other areas of their lives. So they're looking for someone that they can manipulate, someone that they can take from. So understanding. And I think one of the first things to do when you start feeling a little bit of this in your gut is ask someone else you trust and be like, hey, does this seem right to you? Because I know when we were getting gas lit on a few occasions, we had to do a check in and go, wait a second, did my facts check with your facts? Because I'm not sure I'm I'm in the right here. And please tell me if I'm not. I want to get to that in a second. But I just want to rewind one sec to where you mentioned about they're trying to control you because their life's out of control. Because when they to to allow themselves to feel better when everything else is going haywire around them because they refuse to do any work. They've allowed the worst parts of themselves to take over. They go, yeah, but I did that. Yeah, but I did that. See, I'm in control. So that's why they do it. Now, to get back on to checking in with each other to add up some stories to make sure that they were correct way. We remember them. And that's if you're ever at work in a social or or a social circle or any drama going around and you start to question your sanity, am I going crazy? And you have to do this multiple times. That's when you should start to sync up your story with somebody else who's trustworthy. But we'll also get all two are not could be a terrible thing as well. Journaling is a powerful way to contemporize all of these notes so that you can go back and say, is this truly what happened? Is this how the events took place? And sometimes the control that's going on takes a little while for you to catch up on. It's happening slowly over time until all of a sudden it's built up. So it's not just the check. Now it is the passcode to your phone. Now it's controlling your schedule. Now it's setting things up so that you and your backstory no longer align with the people around you. And you start to question, wait a second here. This doesn't seem right. When you feel that checking in with someone else, a third party can help orient you and figure this out. There was a process of getting larger that you mentioned there. And I want to, this is why that journaling is so important because if you're a nice person, you're a laid back person, you pick your battles. This is something that at the beginning you're not, you're going to overlook or go, oh, well, you know, what's the big deal was that it's five bucks. Kind and generous. You're not paying attention to these small details and thinking and assuming that this person is trying to take advantage of me. And they use that to their advantage. Because what are you actually paying attention to? What you have going on and the next thing that you have to do and the next goal that you're trying to make. So the little five bucks here or the story that you were told there that doesn't add up, you're like, yeah, because you're picking your battles because you have bigger fish to fry. There is a bigger goal that you're staring at. And these things knock you off track which these people want. Yeah. It's part of the banana peel in the road, right? In the Mario card of life. This is exactly what they're doing, trying to get you to slip up here. Now the second one, this one we're going to delve into throughout the month, because this is a running theme. Yes. They disregard your boundaries. They disregard your boundaries. And these boundaries can be small to large, but people who disregard boundaries, when you're telling someone, stop behaving a certain way and they only continue, well, that is a toxic person. That is someone who at times is even being malicious in their subversion of your boundaries. So understanding, telling someone, stop, I feel this way when you act out. I feel this because of this behavior and they continue to do it. Well, that's someone who doesn't respect you. Not only do they not respect your boundaries, they just don't respect you. No. And we want to remove ourselves from those people. And a lot of times this will come naturally to other well-adjusted adults. They will understand that boundaries are clear. I'm not going to cross over them, but if someone is repeatedly crossing over them, then they're a toxic individual. And how about this? When people ask us, hey, listen, I have this friend, they're doing this thing, what should I do about it? We always tell them to speak up, to sit that person down, let them know how you feel about it. Because if you don't play out that boundary, there's no reef for them to pull back. However, once you aired what that problem is, and you've said how you feel about it, and they know that you feel bad upon them doing this thing, and they're not gonna talk to you about why they have to do it, or there's no conversation about that. They just do it because, well, fuck you. Right, or they apologize in the moment and then they just go right back to the same action. That's my favorite one, we've seen that. Yeah, and I'll be honest, I've struggled with this in the past. I've struggled with people's boundaries. This is something where I've identified myself being toxic in other relationships, where someone has said, hey, when you behave this way, I feel this way, and then I just go and selfishly do it. Understanding and course correcting is important here. So the pattern is a breaking and disregard of your boundaries. If this is continual and in conversations where you speak up and you give a valid reason and a valid emotion that's tied to the behavior and they disregard it, then that is someone who you can point the finger at and say is a toxic person. This third one, this one, I think we all agree on and we see it quite a bit in people, and it's just overall just being selfish, giving and taking as part of any relationship, but if they're always taking without any giving, it's a toxic person. It's someone who over time has worked his way or her way up to disregarding you, not caring about you. Because giving is telling the other person, I care about you. When we're giving someone, we are letting them know how valuable they are to us. And there's semantics with all these things, but I wanna go through a scenario that happens here. If you don't develop yourself, you look at individual interactions as transactional because you don't wanna get taken advantage of. So every time you give, you're always just staring at that other person, waiting for you to get back and then getting angrier and angrier when you don't get it. When that other person, they're going about their day, they thank you, they're doing their thing and they will find an opportune time to give back in their own way. And that's the other thing, just because you gave in a certain way doesn't mean that you're gonna be getting back in that same manner. So you looking at things transactionally and looking for the same thing in return is only going to put you in a shit position. We will learn how to cultivate and develop high value behaviors and actions that will allow you to look at things as a whole rather than transactionally, which that's where you get into trouble. Right, and this is over time again, a repeated pattern, ditching on the bill. Everyone's buying rounds of drinks, that person never pays for a round of drinks. That person never repays the Uber bill. Over and over this repeated action of take, take, take without any giving, that is someone who is a toxic individual. And we all feel that naturally, we're like, yes, nodding our heads, AJ, I got it, that is toxic behavior. But again, some of us, because we are giving by nature, we're not running around transactionally with this tab, a lot of us forget and don't realize it, right? And the toxic person is pretty shifty about these things. They always have a good excuse, they always have a good reason, I'll get you the next time, I'll get you the next time. And all of a sudden, you're out thousands of dollars because you paid for the trip, you paid for the car, you paid for the food, what's going on here? Well, this is person who's willing to take, take, take without ever giving. And I think as listening to this show and understanding where we're coming from and we mean high value, high value is all about cooperation. It's all about helping individuals around you. When you help people, you attract people who are going to take from you, unfortunately. So identifying this is a clear boundary and a clear way to identify a toxic person. The fourth one that we wanna talk about is, they're always right. They are always right. Always. Rarely, if ever, admit, fault, inaccuracy, misspoke. Oh, I didn't mean that. They're always gonna figure out a way to shift blame, shift focus, and basically never be culpable for any of their actions, behaviors, or words. No one wants to be in business with that guy. Orgal, no. And it's not, it's not fun to be on the receiving end of that. You know, can I, I wanna throw some props to a fellow podcaster who was recently caught in a conundrum with this very thing and watching this person take responsibility and say I could be better was something that I loved hearing and seeing and I thought it was wonderful. And Joe Rogan recently had gotten into a bit of a tiff with some of his listeners who feel that he didn't grill Jack Dorsey hard enough on some questions that they've had. And of course, Joe is wonderful. We listen to his show. Pop of his game. But he does put out a lot of content. And because of that, sometimes he's not as well prepped as he could be for certain shows. They're always misfires. How many, we have so much stuff going on. We're trying to do a show week and sometimes I come in here a bit scattered and I'm trying to put it together because I wanna give the best show that I possibly can. And we certainly know what that's like and we know that Joe's gonna do that. And put in, so with the flack that he had gotten, not only published one online but then I went to his next guest, Sam Harrison and talked about, yes, that was my fault. Yes, I blew it. Yes. I'm gonna make up for it. I'm gonna eat some humble pie and some crow and I'm gonna work to get better. And I let one side and I got caught out for it. And I just thought, right on. Yeah. And it's not easy to admit faults when the stakes are that high. When millions of people are paying attention and you're like, hey, I screwed up. I didn't get it right. How easy would it have been in that moment? To get his heels. And go, you know what, fuck you guys. Yeah. You're gonna listen to whatever I do. So I'm moving on. Like that could have been, and I've seen those kind of people. I'd seen those people a lot. And so that's off the job. Now, when we're talking about being always right, we're not talking about playing board games or trivial pursuit here or just being the smartest person in the room. We're talking about, again, gaslighting, changing the backstory, changing the past so that they're always right. And they will do this in overt ways. They will do this in highly manipulative ways. They will even lie and cheat behind your back to prove to other people that they were right if they find that you're in complete disagreement and you've dug your heels in. So imagine being friends with someone, having a falling out, and then behind your back, they're running around and saying all these things that didn't happen because you're saying they're not right. These are behaviors of someone who's a toxic individual. This goes along with number four here. Obviously, when we're trying to always be right, we're probably gonna be dishonest in the process. Toxic people tend to not value honesty. They may even be borderline pathological liars. And there's a reason for that. If they're heavily on that spectrum, they have, what usually happens is they're trying to put together this facade, this character that they want everybody to see. They've crafted a narrative and the narrative has holes in it. And in order to keep the holes free from other people's eyes, free from other people tearing them down, they're gonna patch up these holes with all sorts of stories, ideas, and lies ultimately to keep that narrative intact. And there'll be so many that, first of all, this is another thing we'll talk about later, but they won't be able to keep it straight. But most importantly, there'll be so many so that you can't keep what's going on straight. The other thing that happens over time is this dishonesty gets rewarded. So they continue to push the boundaries, right? It's like, oh, well, I got away with that small white lie. Now maybe I can say the sky is green today and push, push, push, test, test, test. And all of a sudden you start to question your own reality and sanity, but also your own honesty, right? This gaslighting, when they're playing this dishonest game and they're doing it publicly, they're doing it behind your back, they don't value the truth, they don't value honesty, ultimately they don't respect you. This goes hand in hand with some other things that are just like thievery, right? You still a little thing over here and you still a little thing over here and no one's really said anything so you start pushing the boundaries. It's the same thing as lying, you lie a little bit over here. And you think to yourself, well, where would anyone, there are just some people that when they see those behaviors are like, that's wrong, right? So why does that person allow for them to get away with that? And one has to be with that narrative, right? Is that anything? Well, it's also exerting power, right? It's the same thing because when we're being dishonest, we're stealing the frame, we're exerting our own power and sometimes they actually want you to call them out on their dishonesty, they relish that fight because now they get to play against you and they get to dig in even further. So this whole idea of, oh, they're not honest, well, they're also the ones who are usually trying to claim they're always right. These are going hand in hand, right? Hand in hand. On top of that, right, they'll go out of their way to protect the narrative. The narrative becomes the most important thing in their lives. So that has to be protected. So that rationalizes any other shit behaviors. Right. Now, one other thing about it is these are, a lot of times these are replicative behaviors. They see these behaviors in authoritative figures that they have grown up around watching. The view is successful. The view is successful. So they replicate those behaviors because they think that's what they are supposed to do in order for them to get there. Now, why do they think that those behaviors are the ones that they should be replicating and not other behaviors? Because they hadn't seen any other role models or figures in their lives that showed other behaviors. And again, dishonesty unfortunately does get rewarded. We do not live in a society where only honesty is rewarded. Whether it's Theranos and the blood testing debacle that was taken down, liars and cheaters can get very far in life, can become very successful. When we understand that they're playing a dangerous game and the downfall is horrendous, that what ends up happening when all of the lies collapse on themselves, that downfall is typically spectacular. Oh yeah. But a lot of times they're gonna keep juggling this dishonesty because it's the only way they can keep semblance of a narrative together. Here's what I love. So this is all going on. And what's best about this, don't think that they're hiding the stuff. It comes out and manifests itself with all this drama that is going on around them with all these other people. That's how they're taking the fire off of them by showing you other fires that are going on. So you're like, whoa, what is going on? Whoa, what is going on with Sheila? Oh, what is going on with Joe? So that you're not looking at that guy. And this leads to number six. Yes, it does. They love being the victim. Whoa. So now we're finger pointing in every other direction. This person's taking advantage of me. Well, this one time, this happened to me. And the stories are spinning. The dishonesty is spinning. And you can't make heads or tails of it. But these are people who revel in being victims, persistent victims. There are certainly times in everyone's life where you will be victimized, where something bad happens to you. But are you persistently the victim? Is everyone conspiring against you? Is the Instagram algorithm working against you? And is this person taking advantage of you? And did the mechanic cheat you and X, Y, and Z? And we talk about this. One of the reasons that we try to avoid social media is because it gives a platform to this victimization. And now it's a competition to out victimize each other. Well, you get likes. You get sympathy. You get attention. How can I help? It's it's once again that we have the tech guys exploiting these natural tendencies in all of us to great success. And this victimization comes out in excuses. It comes out in rationalizations. And it comes out in blaming. Just pointing the finger at someone else, taking the spotlight, taking the heat off of them. And their fictitious narrative. Yeah, there's a there's a there's a lot of these bullies, right, who are always right. And they're always lying. You know, they take without giving. They disregard your boundaries. They try to control you. And but when that all catches up, when when they can't run anymore, you've put your you corroborate a story with everybody else and you realize who's at blame. And now they're busted. Watch these people shrink and get small and say woe is me. I couldn't help it. I know I'm awful. I messed up. You got to help me. Yeah, that's when they play their victim trump card. They come up with the backstory and some reason in their upbringing that causes behavior and every rationalization you can think of. Yeah. And then to get out of the noose they put around their own neck. And usually to Johnny's point, they slink away. And when they slink away, they're simply searching for their next person that they can take advantage of with these same behaviors. They're not learning from these behaviors. They're not changing these behaviors. Or as we'll see as we move further through this with part two, but it's you'll feel bad. And you start to think, well, they apologized. Now they have because there was nowhere else to run. But here's the little crack that you'll give them again because you're a good person. This is how you get sucked in. This is how it tells on for years. And all of a sudden, it's $5 here. This little thing over here. And it's before you know it, it's full blown. You're sucked right back in. And a lot of times they'll do some overt gesture of something they know you value to try to win you back. And it's usually not much skin off their back, but they try their best to position it as how much they're helping you. See how I'm paying my reparations for this bad behavior. You caught me. Now I'm making everything solid. And that's how you get in this perpetual cycle of being controlled, being manipulated, being lied to, being abused. And then, oh, great, there's this carrot all of a sudden. Look at this great thing that so and so did for me. Now I can go back and forgive them. I can look past some of these behaviors. Now oftentimes the victim hood that they're chasing is because of number seven here, they're just avoiding any all responsibility. Any and all responsibility. My Google calendar is broken, Gmail is down, this isn't working, I didn't get the tweet notification. Everything under the sun that they can blame and shift responsibility onto, they will use to their advantage. And I wanna go through the process of path of least resistance here as well, right? So if you tell me why I didn't get the notification, I can either believe that and move on and go about my day because I have other things to do or I have to sit you down, go through this, and then it's like, well, if I, but here's the thing, you have to do that because you have to let the person know they're not getting through. If you let it go through once, and then it happens again, and then it happens again, and they know that they're mis- In control. They're in control. They know that you will take your time out to have this sit down because it's uncomfortable for you. And they're gonna play on that. So to recap, number one, they're trying to control you. Number two, they're disregarding your boundaries entirely. Number three, they're consistently taking without giving. Typically their giving is very token in nature and it's not really valuable. Four, they're always right. They're the ones that will argue until they're blue in the face to prove you wrong. Number five, they are dishonest. Number six, they love being the victim. And number seven, they refuse to take any responsibility. Now, Johnny, I know on this show, we throw around the words high value quite a bit. And for some in our audience, they may not understand what we mean by high value. And it's something that has really been the ethos of the company over the last 12 years. This total understanding of if we start here, we fix this about ourselves. We're trying to make some gains. The easiest way to attract the right people into our lives and foster great relationships is to come from a place of high value. You could say it's the philosophical core of the art of term. Absolutely. And when we talk about high value behaviors and traits, there really are three that we wanna highlight today that when we understand these three things, we not only can be that amazing friend, that amazing spouse, that amazing coworker, but we're also gonna allow other amazing people into our lives, right? We're not gonna be that toxic person that high value people run from who consistently find ourselves struggling to build quality relationships. And the first one is displaying cooperative behaviors, right? When we are being cooperative, when we're looking to help someone else, that's the clearest indicator that we're not dealing with someone who's a toxic individual. They're not looking to steal the spotlight. They're not looking to take advantage of you. They're not looking to change the story or change the subject. They're willing to support you. And that means we're gonna be in a place of mutual support now, right? That's a quality relationship where we're both supported. And look, that's not the easy road. That's the hard road. That takes a little bit more effort. That takes time. But if you're willing to take a little bit of effort and a little bit of time in the hard road for yourself, then you're willing to do that for other people. Right, there's a selflessness about this, right? I understand there's gonna be times where things aren't going great for you and it's difficult to see your friend, neighbor, coworker succeeding. But those are the moments when we can be cooperative, we can celebrate other people and we can really show that we're a high value individual. We have high self-worth. We view ourselves and our core mission as valuable. But also we wanna support everyone else and their core values and their core purpose. And that is why, you were mentioning earlier, why boundaries are so important because if you're going to be selfless, if you're going to give to others, you have to make sure that you don't get stuck by tending to yourself last. Right. And the other thing is, you have to make sure that you're in a good place to be at your best to give to others. And understand that it's not a zero-sum game where we're just trying to never get taken advantage of here, right? We can't avoid it. When we're being cooperative, there are going to be toxic people that appear. All we're trying to do as we went through those seven signs earlier is find them early and move on and not let them impact us. You know, there was a, I can't remember the exact situation, but there was a conversation you and I had a few years ago and it was dealing with a toxic person. And you asked if I was okay because I was a little bit pissed off about the situation. And I said, yeah, you know, I'm more bugged out that I had let myself get taken advantage of, but I also realized it was, I also realized that it had been a long time since that had happened and I was kind of startled only because I had done such a great job and keeping those people at bay for so long. And so my point being is it's not that you're gonna get rid of these people forever but you're gonna get better and better so you'll deal with it less and less. Yeah, you'll nip it in the bud sooner and sooner as well. So we're not investing years, decades in these relationships that are harming us. High value people don't see other high value people as competition. In fact, they welcome other high value people into their lives. So when we talk about being cooperative, it's not saying, oh, Johnny has more followers than me. I can't invite them over. I can't hang out with them. It's not writing people off because they're further ahead. And it's not looking at this scarcity of, oh, well, if they're doing this successful that means I can't be successful too. High value individuals understand that it's not about competition, it's about supporting one another. And they also don't feel insecure about where you are in your life. They realize that we're all on a journey and just because we've taken a snapshot comparatively speaking where one person looks farther ahead than the other, it doesn't have any impact on their own self-worth. Well, I would also go to say that it's not really that they don't feel insecure they could be jealous in that moment but they can rise above that pettiness and they can recognize in themselves, okay, I'm being stupid right now. I know that when I'm on these stupid social media apps and I see something dumb that and I will catch myself going, getting angry at somebody and like, why are you mad at that person? You're like, why? I'm like, and I go, you have to be self-reflective. And I go, I don't really know. And I'm like, okay, do you think you could congratulate them? Yeah, I guess I could do that because it really has nothing to do with me, it doesn't. And I'm like, yeah, maybe you should. And I'm like, congrats, wonderful. So we all struggle at that. Absolutely. You know, I value people understand that we all have flaws. They've recognized some of their own and they're working on fixing them. They're working on improving these flaws. I used to get mad that I would have those feelings that why am I having them? No, it just goes, it's an understanding of that it's just, it's natural tendencies. You know, I want certain things when I see other people get them. And there's a, of course, like, why did I personally get, I work hard too. And it's like, yeah, you know, congratulate that man. But now I know when I feel that and I can understand it and I can rise above it, that makes me feel good. Absolutely. I mean, there are a number of things that we can do to change our mood in those moments. We just don't allow it to take us down a darker road where now we're doing a deep dive in social and we're just beating ourselves up for hours, days on end is recognizing it's okay to feel that. We're not going to turn off those emotions. Second thing I want to point out in terms of high value traits is they see vulnerability as a strength. Yes. High value individuals see vulnerability as a strength. People who are willing to be vulnerable around other people, you can actually start to feel safe with, right? It's not about this fictitious narrative, this larger than life person who has no flaws, who's Superman, who's James Bond. It's about actually being real with people. It's about showcasing to a degree some of those flaws you're working on so other people can see that side of you. And you want a clear sign that you're surrounded by low value toxic people? Well, if you're afraid to be vulnerable around them, then you're around low value people and the story because high value people will encourage that vulnerability because they want to help you. Because they want your help. They want to support you. They're happy to support you. And honestly, that's what a quality relationship is. If you feel unsupported because you can't be vulnerable and people around you are not going to see what you're going through as something they can help with, then we need to start making some new friends. We need to start clearing some space and some time to welcome in some new people. Now, the last thing is high value people have personal conviction. They know what's important to them and they go after it. We had Kobe on the show and we asked him, how do you let people in your inner circle and he said discipline and passion? Yes. Simple, two things he looks for. Guess what? If you have conviction, you're going to be disciplined. You're not going to come up with excuses. You're not going to play the blame game. You're not going to point the fingers and gaslight other people. You're going to take control of the situation as best you can and work to move in the right direction, not blame game and point fingers. You know, I want to say something and this is just, this is observation. I don't have any statistics or anything to back this up, but I started seeing that too cool for school thing a lot in Gen X, like my generation, where there was the irony of everything and everything sucks and why make an attempt and you're only going to get let down and that's not cool and that's not cool. And it started to anger me because I saw it thrown to things that I was extremely passionate about. And there's a social phenomenon where community creates belief. So if everyone around you keeps telling you they're wrong and then you have to start to, do I change the way I'm thinking or do I stay steadfast? And highly motivated personal conviction people can stick to their values and their goals where the wishy-washy people can be easily manipulated and this comes to the old saying that if you don't stand for anything, you'll fall for anything. Yeah, so having convictions, orienting yourself around your values and your purpose goes a long way towards being that high value person. So when we think about the relationships in our life, we now have seven clear signals that someone is a toxic individual and we're talking about giving them some room for error here because if they are displaying these other high value traits of being cooperative, having vulnerability but real vulnerability, not dishonest vulnerability and ultimately having personal convictions and goals, now we start to measure the people around us and orient ourselves correctly instead of always assuming the best in people and not seeing some of these signals that people in general will display when they're in a toxic relationship. And I know it took me a while because when you're trying to be high value, trying to give without thinking about what you get in return, you're using your own vulnerability. Well, yes, sometimes these toxic people will use that against you. They'll take from you, they'll see your vulnerability and now they'll hold it against you, they'll work angles to make you feel vulnerable so you don't get rid of them so that you stick with them. So understanding these traits of both low value toxic people and high value people, now we can start to actually move and feel comfortable in the relationships that we're investing in. This is what causes human beings to be tribal as well because if you have a certain core of ideas and beliefs and things that you're passionate about and you're trying to hold your conviction to these things so that you can derive some meaning from life, then you're gonna get everyone out of your way who doesn't hold those same things to such high value. And then we start squabbling over, my values are better than yours. Now, so it's a double-edged sword. It doesn't have to be that way. We can live and let live and, but it's like, but if that's the values you're gonna have, then you gotta go over there. Well, it's funny, right? Because hindsight is always 2020 and in prepping for this episode and thinking about these things, I look back on some behaviors that I encountered and I was like, oh, well, why didn't I see that? And sometimes they are wrapped in false displays of cooperativity. They are wrapped in false displays of vulnerability. They are wrapped in false displays of personal conviction. Johnny, we had a mutual friend who was trying to work out and lose weight and I was also trying to work out and lose weight and he got me pretty fired up. He was like, hey, I wanna go on hikes all the time. I'm like, yes, absolutely, let's go on hikes. So we'd knock out an hour long, hour and a half long hike and then we'd go to lunch. And of course, after hiking, you know I wanna have something a little healthier. No, my friend, our friend, demanded that we had to go to this buffet after the hike. Now, you can imagine, on the one hand, I'm excited we're going on these hikes, I'm getting my exercise in and I'm not really thinking about his buffet choice at the end of it, right? But over time, that buffet choice, putting me in a situation where I have endless amounts of food is gonna be detrimental to my exercise goals. So a lot of these things that we're talking about, they are subtle, they're not as overt as we'd hope they would be. And a lot of times we're giving the other person too much of the benefit of the doubt and viewing them in the same way that we view ourselves as honest, as cooperative, as vulnerable, as someone who has convictions. I wanna dig in right there because I think you just said the magic phrase, right? Given people benefit of the doubt because if you're looking to be a high-value person and you're looking to bring in high-value people, you can't go into the situation being negative about everybody. So you're putting your best out there. Look forward, yeah. And this is, and that's important in any situation. We know that if you go into situations looking for the negative, you're going to see it. So this is where you have to be careful because and people who tend to find themselves in a lot of toxic situations, they can't be at fault but they tend to beat themselves up. But it's like you were doing the right things. That's how they got in in the first place. And that's why listening to this is so important because if you put a few of these things in the play, you're going to get better and better at getting these people out of your life or seeing them beforehand. Right, spending less time investing in them and surrounding yourselves with these types of relationships. And for people who are successful, they have worked wonders on their social circle to get it to where they would want it to be and they're meticulous about who's going to be in and who's going to be out and who everyone's bringing in. We've talked about that with countless guests. Yes, we have. About that inner circle and what they're looking for. And when we talk about these traits, ultimately they are looking for the high value traits and sometimes low value people display these high value traits temporarily. So we're looking at patterns here. Now the question we have for you today is what kinds of relationships are you finding in your life that are toxic? And ultimately, how have they affected you? I know some people have lost jobs, changed careers, moved, had to go through dramatic changes and shifts to remove someone who's toxic. So hopefully we've allowed you to identify some behavior patterns that we want to avoid. We also realized some behavior patterns in ourselves that maybe we're presenting in relationships that could be producing some toxicity. And lastly, we ended with those high value traits we're all aspiring to, cooperativity, vulnerability and conviction. This ends part one of the toolbox. For the month, I hope you had a lot of fun. I know John and I had a ton of fun putting this together and thinking back through various relationships over our lives that have been both beneficial and sometimes unfortunately toxic. And next week, we're gonna be digging in even further on this idea of toxic relationships, especially when it comes to how do we deal with the people? Now we've identified it, how do we course correct? Especially when we're talking about coworkers and family members who we can't necessarily just walk away from, right? We gotta spend some time with them. So stay tuned to next week's toolbox on toxic relationships. See you guys later.