What to do if you have friends that are bad influences
There will come a time when you will lose friends due to moving or other circumstances. When a friend starts to become a bad influence, you may need to part ways. Your friends say a lot about the person that you are. Surrounding yourself with like-minded individuals is the best thing you can do for your own image and for yourself. Picking the right group of friends is essential to your self-esteem and to your overall outlook on life. Friends that become bad influences are not there to support and uplift you. Instead they are there to tear you down and build themselves up by doing so.
To figure out if your friends are bad influences, step back and observe their behaviors. How do they treat others? Are they positive and uplifting to be around or do they constantly tear others down? Do you have friends that are emotionally draining? These individuals tend to go on and on about their problems in life and they never once ask how you are doing or what they can do to make your life better.
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There are some things you can do when you realize that your friends are bad influences. You can go extreme and cut them out completely from your life. This should be your last option because you have invested time and effort into building a friendship with this person. Just because they aren't a good friend doesn't mean you are a bad one. A good friend tries before they fly!
The best thing to do is confront this person head on. Call them out on their behavior. Some people may not even realize they have this type of behavior, let alone that this behavior actually has an impact on the people around them. Give them a chance to change and if they don't you can move on.
You can learn to change. You don't need to stoop to their level, but you don't need to sit around and complain about their behavior all the time either. Try spending less time with this friend and focus on spending more time with positive friends and the people that uplift you and bring you happiness.
If this friend is part of your group of friends, you may find it hard to avoid them. Instead of trying to avoid them all the time, only allow yourself to hang out with them when you have a group of friend to be around. This way you don't need to spend time with them one-on-one.
Start looking for a new group of friends that shares your values and ideas. This is one of the best things to do if you friend is pretty much unwilling to change and become a better person. Again, try to get yourself away from negative people as much as possible as they are just leaches and will hurt your self-esteem.
If you have a friend that just uses you all the time, dump them! These individuals are not worth being friends with because they don't really care about you. They only care about the things you can bring to the table like money or other friends with connections. A true friend cares about who you are, not what you have. They want to be with you because they enjoy your company and you make them happy.
In order to have good friends, you need to have a positive attitude. Positive people will naturally come together and you can build some great friendships by being true to who you are and not compromising your standards or value for another person that claims to be your "friend."
