Dear Maggie,
I am so sick of you telling everyone to just look for the good things in people and ignore the bad stuff. What about really awful, horrible people? What about people in your life who just don’t deserve you being kind and positive and nice to them? I mean, if you’re nice to someone who treats you like dirt, aren’t you sort of letting them treat you that way? If you ignore all the awful stuff they do to you, doesn’t that give them permission to keep doing it? Where does justice and standing up for yourself and refusing to be a doormat come into this positive thinking stuff, anyway?
I ask because I have some nasty people in my life, people who are constantly asking for help but refusing to ever pay anything back or even to really appreciate all I do for them. If I say no, they’re furious. If I say yes, they just ask for even more. And they don’t deserve it. So am I supposed to ignore their bad habits and just keep giving them help all the time? I just don’t get it! Help!
Signed,
Fed Up with Moochers!

Dear Fed Up,
We create everything in our lives. So whoever you are currently interacting with, you attracted them to you. You brought them to you by your focus. If one person made you feel used, taken advantage of, and unappreciated, and you got upset about it, and mulled it over for a bit, you were actively creating more of the same. If you had let it go and gone about your business of feeling good, you wouldn’t have grown a crop of moochers from that one single seed somewhere in the past.
So the simple answer for you is this. If you keep focusing on all those awful people and being furious about the awful stuff they do, you’ll get more just like them and more of the same from them.
I never said you have to do whatever anyone asks you to do. Do what feels good. Ignore the bad, focus on the good to make relationships work. But if you don’t want the relationship, if you don’t want these kinds of people in your life, just ignore them completely, and they’ll go away. Stop saying yes. Why do you care if they get furious? Let them. What they think about you is none of your business. Focus your time and attention on good friends, those who do not abuse your generosity, those who are not constantly needy, those who are grateful, and who reciproate, or better yet, those who can take care of themselves and don’t need you to do it for them.
I suspect you need to be needed. And then when you get it, you resent it. So mull that over for a few days, just in case.
And meanwhile, if you don’t like the moochers, don’t be around the moochers. Be with people you DO like, people you feel good around. I may write about vampires, but in real life, I don’t like them at all. Real vampires will bleed you dry, just like the fictional ones are said to do. But just like the fictional ones, they can only come in if you invite them.
So stop inviting them. Stop noticing them at all. Make them disappear from your thoughts, and they will disappear from your life. It’s really just that simple.
Best,
Maggie