Sometimes, You’re The One Who Needs To Change

Sometimes, you’re the toxic one. Sometimes, instead of assigning the blame to the people around you or the universe in general, you have to take responsibility for your own actions. You have to look in the mirror and realize you haven’t been acting your best lately, you haven’t been reaching your full potential.

This doesn’t mean you should start hating yourself for everything you’ve done wrong. It doesn’t mean you should mope about what a screwup you are either. It only means you should work on ways to alter your behavior.

Even though you might get upset when you realize you’ve been in the wrong, it’s actually a good thing when you see your toxic traits. The first step toward change is recognizing there’s a problem. Once you know there’s something about yourself that needs improvement, you can start working toward bettering yourself. You can take the necessary steps to turning yourself into a more well-rounded person.

Sometimes, you’re the one who needs to change, even though you have a hard time seeing it. It’s so much easier to blame the world for your problems, to blame other people for your problems, to blame circumstances for your problems. But sometimes, you’re part of the problem.

If you throw your phone across the room because someone makes you angry, you can blame them for your anger. But you can only blame yourself for your reaction to your anger.

To put it simply, you might not be able to control the way you feel when someone hurts you, but you have complete control over the actions you take in response to those feelings. You have more power than you let yourself realize.

Although it’s never a bad idea to work on yourself, you should be doing it because it’s what you want to do, not because someone else has convinced you there’s something wrong with you, not because someone else has insisted you’re the problem.

Sometimes, toxic people refuse to take responsibility for their actions. Sometimes, they will manipulate you into feeling like you’re the one who needs to change, even though they have been the source of drama.

You shouldn’t blindly listen to anyone else when they say you’re too emotional, too weird, too crazy. They might be covering for themselves. They might be trying to turn the situation around to blame you so they don’t have to bother to reflect on themselves.

Sometimes, they might be the real problem. Other times, you both might be a problem. You both might need to work on yourselves. You might both have faults you should work toward changing.

It’s easy to act like your own worst enemy, but it’s dangerous to assume there are a million things wrong with you — and it’s also dangerous to assume you’re perfect. You have to be self-aware. You have to realize you have good traits and bad traits, weaknesses and strengths. You have to realize there are beautiful things about you, and things you could benefit from changing.