I saw this on a T-shirt someone wore to barre class the other day.
I love it.
Because it’s true: our vibe, as in the way we live, our attitude about everything that happens to us, our willingness to cut people some slack when things don’t go well…all of this determines our tribe—the people who surround us.
So is our tribe kind, generous, empathetic, positive, hopeful, and happy? Depends on us, on how we interact with the world.
How—exactly?
When things don’t go well with someone and we let it go, maybe give them the benefit of the doubt that they’re just having a bad day, then there’s a really good chance they’ll do the same for us when we need it.
When we cover for someone who makes a mistake, maybe even by fixing it for them behind the scenes so no one ever finds out about it, next time we make a mistake, we’ll look up and find ourselves surrounded by people who are covering for us.
When we talk in positive, hopeful terms about life, the world, and the future, we’ll have a lot in common with people who do the same, and no so much in common with people who don’t. We’ll look around and realize we’re surrounded by the positive crowd: the people we have more to talk about with.
When we’re kind people, our love and understanding will eventually make anyone trying to be mean to us feel uncomfortable or out of place. They’ll have only one choice: be nice or be gone. Again, we’ll pick our head up and realize we’re surrounded by nice people. That’s not an accident or a coincidence.
The idea here is that our gentle vibe opens a channel of love and positive experiences that flows in both directions: out from us but also back toward us.
Beautiful someone, when we’re kind, understanding, and generous, or world is filled with kindness understanding, and generosity because those are the qualities of the people we attract.
This doesn’t mean that cruel people won’t enter our lives—they will, guaranteed. It just means they won’t stay because they won’t feel at home next to us.
We won’t grouse with them.
We won’t fight with them.
We won’t react to their cruelty.
Will this take a strong stomach? Sometimes, yeah. Especially when we’re tired or stressed, or just not ready to deal. But it’s a choice we make—a strategic choice, the long game—to create our lives. That means no one is allowed to hijack our day, week, month, year or happy, healthy, sane life by pulling us into a sticky web of negativity, anger, or fear.
And you know what? Not only will our vibe attract our tribe, it may even change people. They may see ours as a tribe they want to be part of.
Maybe sometimes our vibe creates a tribe?
Imagine that. Cool.