Are these the people who are taking from you right now
First rule of life, cut everyone out of your life who isn't either:
A. Encouraging you
Or
B. Offering constructive criticism
But there's one catch to this, you have to be sure you're adding value back or else it's not fair to judge others and cut them out, right?
You’ve got to practice what you preach but this rule is so powerful that nobody applies it.
You're going to find a lot of people in your life called, "free riders", that's the economics term for it, and they want something but they give nothing. They want value from you but they don't offer any value first.
Encouragement or constructive criticism are the two most powerful forms of value anybody can add to a person's social life, right?
Follow this rule. If somebody's annoying, it doesn't mean you should cut them off because they might be offering constructive criticism into your life. It might be painful but it might be helpful. At the end of the day, it's value for value. They call this reciprocal altruism. It’s the scientific term for it and you always want to be in reciprocal win/win type situations.
Ask yourself about the closest people to you. Are they offering one of those two on a continual basis? Also, what are you offering? You might need to offer it first. I often say before I want to cut somebody off, let me try to offer value and see if they reciprocate because maybe they're not offering constructive criticism or encouragement because I'm not doing it first. The chicken or the egg, right? What comes first? Them encouraging you or you encouraging them?
You can only control yourself, so you must take action on yourself and next thing you know about half the people you come across will reciprocate and half the people show you their true colors AKA they don't want to offer value. Sometimes you can cut them off immediately. If they're family members or bosses or somebody you're dating… hopefully you're not married to them, you can slowly phase them out. It doesn't always have to be abrupt but you can move toward that goal. That's the best social advice I've ever followed for myself.