What does it mean to be a point of reference for others

In the last few months, whenever I had conversations with others, I stumbled upon the concept of point of reference. To be more precise, about the way in which we should do certain things, simple things, that we don’t know how to do anymore, and there’s no place to learn them.

Imagine you have a friend who makes bad jokes. Some of their jokes are about you, others are about your other friends, and there are also general jokes, but still bad. You accept the majority of your friends’ jokes and some of them are decent, a bit funny sometimes.

At a certain point, your friend insults you with their jokes. So you set yourself to have a discussion with your friend because you want to ask your friend to revise their attitude. But your friend doesn’t care and continues to make bad jokes. This is the moment where you need to know how to manage the situation so your friend understands that they’re not on the right path. You’ll have to be firm in that discussion, have a strong voice, without raising your voice, so you drag your friend out of their reality so they can understand that something needs to change.

If you don’t have a point of reference for how such a discussion should look and what it means to be firm, you won’t know how to do it.

The same firmness is needed when your employee doesn’t pay your salary on time and when you bring it up, they come up with all kinds of excuses.

The same firmness is needed when your child doesn’t want to do their homework and, instead of paying attention to their school responsibilities, they play video games.

These points of reference should have been present in your life, especially when you were young, and you should have seen them in your parents’ behavior. But it didn’t happen for many people and we live our lives without knowing, for example, what it means to be firm. Simply because we never had the chance to learn it from someone.

And just the way you search for points of reference in others, others are searching for points of reference in you.

Don’t give up the things that are important to you

I was speaking with a friend yesterday and I was telling him how important it is to have a good state of mind, no matter what.

He was telling me that his state of mind is generally good, but there are moments where he becomes absorbed of what is happening in his life, which I believe is normal. But as normal as that, especially in the current state of society, is to make the effort needed to have a good state of mind all the time. For me, this is one of my priorities and I want to be able to do it, whatever happens in my life.

If it is important to you to have a good state of mind (for my friend it is important) and have it all the time, then you shouldn’t let the small things from your life influence that. Don’t let yourself influenced by the people around you, who seem frustrated or depressed. Don’t let yourself influenced by the evil minded.

Keep your state of mind as good as it can be and be a point of reference for those around you. Even more so if you are the last person you know who has a great state of mind. You are exactly the one that others need. You are the point of reference others can’t find anywhere else.

When others choose to feel good just sometimes, show them what it means to feel good all the time.

But it doesn’t mean you do it for them. You do it for yourself. Because it is important to you to feel good all the time. And that’s what will help others understand what it means to feel good all the time.

Be a point of reference for those around you

I like to think that it is a moral responsibility to be a point of reference for others.

I used to be mean to those who did something bad to me because I wanted them to feel the way I felt. And the worse I was with these people, the more harm I was doing to myself.

I realized that wasn’t the solution, even though I was absorbed by the idea of making others feel what I felt. I was so hurt that I wanted to hurt back, but I was only hurting myself.

And I ended up doing exactly the opposite. I ended up behaving nicely with people, especially with those who did bad things to me, so they can understand that you can behave differently. This way, I also don’t waste energy, thinking that those people would learn from treating them the way they treated me.

Since I set myself to be a point of reference for those around me, my life became better because it gave me the chance to have a healthy purpose with what I live.

With love and optimism,
David