Hello beautiful soul. I'm Sarah Michaels, and welcome to the Elated You podcast, where we dive deep into the world of self discovery, growth and healing to find out who you truly are.How to let go of friendships that are no longer serving you or toxic relationships? This is such a great topic, and for me, it just wasn't spoken about when I was going through this myself, especially when you're in this work. I mean, this is for everyone, but for me, it was especially when I was in this work, why? Because the long the long term friendships that I had, were just not working out and I couldn't understand why and I couldn't understand what I was supposed to do because, you know, there's always that element of feeling guilty and feeling bad. And, you know, society teaches us that long relationships, long friendships need to be cherished, right so that the longer the friendship kind of like valued, personality wise, like by how long you've been friends with someone for and so I would always really boast about having a friendship for over 30 years. And not as if there's anything wrong with having friendships for you know, long friendships like 30 years. However, if you are growing and you are, you know, on a journey and you are doing work and you are changing you are evolving, and your friends aren't. I find it really challenging for anyone to stay in those kind of relationships or friendships, you know, whether you're in a friendship or relationship and your partner, you know, you're growing, your partner's growing and you're evolving and your partner isn't it's like you kind of don't really have that much in common. And what tends to happen is that they tend to want to keep you down, like as in, keep you down where they are, and keep you small. So for me, I remember telling friends that I wanted to do comedy and stand up and you know, get back and seen and I remember one of the husbands turning around saying come on, man, you're married with kids now like really like knowing you know, me knowing that my husband was like fully supporting me in that and you know, me taking whatever it was whatever path I wanted to take right? Regardless of whether or not I have kids,regardless of my age. But it's that if that mentality, that old mentality, where we tell ourselves that you know, you're too old to do this new tool to do that. You shouldn't do this and you shouldn't do that. Why? Why? Do we put so much? Yeah, like, why did we do that? Basically, I don't know. So, you know, they were the people that were keeping me small because here I was, you know, coming on Tik Tok and Instagram and doing reels and full on you know, like YouTube and comedy and stepping fully into my you know, myself. This is the part of me that I've been wanting to step into for such a long time, but had so much fear around it. It just happens to be that it was this age where my career started in my 40s. And so I was now able to step in, and I've got so much more that I want to step into. But these people were finding it really really so many. So many men, especially women tend to mask a bag Okay, yeah, that's you know, that's That's great. Good. I knew but really deep down, you know, when someone is, you know, is genuine about how they feel, especially if they're not stepping into it because they're thinking fucking how come she's doing that? I couldn't even think of anything worse at that age. But anyway, this isn't about judgment, what I really want to talk about is how do we let go of them and why it's important that we do because toxic relationships right, whether it's family or friends, and no matter how long you know, they've been in your life, it's still toxic. So if you feel that you're no longer aligned, you need to do something about it. It's quite simple, because a really great analogy that I came up with one day is I want you to imagine that we're all birds. And you know, now that your wings have not been clipped, and all the people that you're hanging around with are like no, our wings have been clipped. We can't fly. What the fuck are you doing? Like stay here with us? Like seriously, like, come back down to earth? Where are you going? But you're like, Nah, man, there is another world out there. And I have found out that my wings aren't clipped because you've had a little taste you're like flying but what's happening is you keep on wanting to stay with your friends. So you're not soaring like an eagle. You're just letting your feet off the ground. You're flying a little bit and you're coming back down to them you'll keep coming back down to them. And so that's when I say that, you know, you hear the same people your friends will hold you back and keep you small is because that is exactly what they'll do because they want to keep you in the same place that you've always been and they will remind you constantly of the old version of you. You know what I have people telling me oh, I remember used to do that. Used to scream at your kids. And you said Yeah, I did. I did used to do that. And I fucking own that. I have no shame around that because I wasn't conscious. I only did what I was taught what I what I learned was learned behavior. I didn't understand triggers and shadows and shadow children and how my life was playing out and for me, right. So but these people will do it not to remind you like look how far you've come. It's like that's the person that you still up because they don't believe that you can change. And so if you want to still stay in a relationship or friendship where someone is going to continuously pull you back and tell you you can't fly, then you're never going to end up flying. That's the truth of it. Because you're not aligned. You're not aligned with your purpose when you're when you're when you're around people that you're not aligned with either. And it was a really hard one for me to grasp. And I never when my mentor spoke to me about this, I was like fuck, well really, I feel bad. And he was like, Oh, what about you? Do you feel bad for you? Like you're caring about these relationships? are you caring about this particular relationship, but then what does that say about how much you care about yourself? And I was like, fuck, that's so true. It's like, do that self love thing goes again, where you like putting emphasis on another being and worrying about another beings feelings more than your own. And that's when that for me is a game changer. When you can look at your relationship or friendship and go hold on, I'm putting this person's needs before my own, then that needs to go because I'm number one. And if I'm getting hurt in this relationship, or I'm not feeling myself or comfortable, because if your relationships aren't empowering you right if they're not fucking lighting you up if they're not bringing you joy. I mean, even if you're not learning from these relationships or friendships, if you're not growing in them, then I don't know like, maybe it's just not aligned for you. And that for me is a big one. You know, people talk about friendship circles. I don't even have a circle anymore. And I'm really good with that. Like, I've created that. You know, I've got more like a square. Like, I don't want a circle. You know, it's not about the quantity and I know that sounds like so cliche in quantity over quality over quantity. But for me, it's so true because when I was younger, I had a lot of friends even just recently had lots of friendship groups. But now I love that when my phone rings, I run to it because I know that it's going to be someone that I care about, I know it's going to be someone to have a conversation with unless it's a telemarketer. But like I'm excited it lights me up when I'm hanging out with my friends. I don't you know, that's boundaries as well, right? Like I don't have people over. I don't accept invitations anymore. And I'm really blunt about it. I don't make excuses. And I just say I can't you know, even if that means I'll go sit at home and listen to an audible or a podcast or just sit at home by myself. But I am so okay with that because I don't need to find happiness outside of me. I don't even try and find it in my husband anymore. Like I know that I've got it inside and when I want it I can just go within. So I don't have friendships for that reason. I don't have friendships. I don't go out drinking so that's not my thing. So you really need to, I guess, evaluate like what it is for you that you want. What it is for you that you, you know that you want out of your friendships or your relationship because once they're not aligned, it's really hard to stay in that because you're not being authentic. Right, you start to yeah, I find that we do, we start playing small and it starts to get irritating. And then you start to pull away from the work that you're doing or the person that you're becoming the person that you are. And it just I don't know it doesn't work and so you can either wait until it just starts to deteriorate or you can make the decision and go yeah, this person is no longer aligned with me. And when that happens, I have to say it's pretty incredible how the universe in the end seriously has your back. Like you may let go of some people and then all of a sudden, the universe starts to bring in all these amazing people in your life that you're aligned with. And they start coming out of nowhere. And online like Instagram for me has been a really massive one where I have honestly made relationships, even just through my programs, a lot of my clients have become my closest friends. Why? Because when we have conversations now they're fucking purposeful conversations. They're like, beautiful, meaningful, incredible, you know, conversations where we're learning from each other and I love that. I cannot and I can I will I refuse to have bullshit conversation. I will walk away. I've got people in our life, you know, their family, and you know, sometimes when the people pleasing comes out, and I'm really open and I'm like your people pleasing. Like, stop, stop. I get really irritated. Where I'm just like, stop. Because I'm like, fuck, like, please, I can't be around that anymore. I can't be around the fake conversation. I can't be around people that are still wounded and pleasing and not doing the work knowing that there's work around it like knowing that you can sort that out, but choose not to. And the other thing is for me, I have a lot of friends that were joking and making fun of this work and calling it like a cult and like I can't believe people pay to breathe and like as long as you can make the money out of this, you know, it's like well, I've replaced two incomes by doing this but anyway, fuck and how like, wow, like, is that the support that you're getting from your friends? So, you know, it's really just something that you need to sit with. It's not someone something that you can ask anyone because it's something that I had to sit with in the end and go hold on, what am I allowing into my life? Would you allow this for your children? So you know, I had explained to my children I didn't like the way I was being spoken to. I didn't like this in this relationship and this relationship was no longer working. And let me tell you I still care about these people. I often think about these people and I send them love. And if I saw them in the street, unfortunately my husband bumped into one of the couples and they gave him the worst look and looked away which is really sad. But for me, I still love on these people. I still care about these people. Both my husband and I do I have no resentment or hate towards anybody. But I love myself enough to not have friendships that are just not aligned with me anymore. And it's as simple as that. So I hope that you can find something in this and if you would like to, you know get stronger in this please something that we talk about in my level of challenge my program, my seven week online program where you can learn so much about boundaries and how you can really start to own your truth and step into more of that because it takes a lot of confidence to and self love to be able to cut people out of your life and put yourself first so yeah, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening, If you found value in this content, please subscribe to my podcast and head over to Instagram at elated_you to see what I'm getting up to. Bye
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