"Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. It's your masterpiece after all."

As we embarked into 2018, I found myself frequently bombarded with the plethora of posts, comments, and protests of my friends via social media that this would be the year in which they "cut out toxic people" from their lives.

Unfortunately, as we get older, our friendship circles shrink and become smaller as the years progress. It is essential that we maintain healthy boundaries with others in order to achieve healthy relationships. This is necessary in order to not deplete ourselves with our inner peace and happiness.

I am no stranger to this idea of removing individuals who contributed in a negative manner to my life, gifting those individuals with a means of absence in order to work towards maintaining a healthy, balanced life.

But, do we ever stop to ask ourselves if perhaps we may be the toxic person in someone else's life?

I find that many of us, myself included, are so quick to assume the victim role and to analyze and criticize the actions of others and how they have affected our lives. Unfortunately, many of us are not as diligent in assessing how our daily actions, words, and intentions may be contributing to our relationships on a daily basis. Do we ever stop to think that what we are doing is costing someone else their inner peace?

"You can't change someone who doesn't see an issue in their actions."

As we navigate the trials and tribulations that come on with adulthood, I find that it is essential, and quite frankly a social responsibility, to be as interpersonal as possible. Just as being critical of how we see other people's words and actions affecting our lives, we too should be critical in assessing our habits, behaviors, and comments affecting those in our lives.

Towards the closing of 2017, I began to see the actions that I was making on how they reflected very negatively of my behavior. I had shed many a friendship after graduating college in order to find a place that granted me validation and peace. I wanted to create friendships that contributed to lifting me up instead of putting me down.

While ending those friendships, I was able to finally open my eyes to the ugly side of myself, parts of inner self that needed a serious adjustment. Parts of myself that needed to become more understanding, more loving, more empathetic. I realized that as much as I needed to end those friendships, those individuals needed it too because of the negative elements that I was contributing to their lives as well.

As we enter into 2018, we need to accept this idea that every relationship and its accompanying negativity goes both ways, although it's not always in equal parts.

As we embark our journeys with loving ourselves and striving to be our best selves, I find it to be imperative that we dedicate our energies to finding the toxic nuggets of ourselves. Once they are found, we need to accept them and motivate ourselves to correct them. In turn, hopefully this creates a better you, a better foundation for future relationships, and a brighter future for developments of a path toward happiness.