Detox Your Circle, Activate Your Destiny: 13 Toxic Elements to Cleanse from Your Life

By Ernest Sears Jr

After doing over fifteen years of hard time in a cubicle or office, you and your laptop have found Nirvana at the Starbucks around the corner. Mercifully, the career is over; the kids are gone. Now there is nothing left to distract you from the elephant in the room.

You stare at your significant other with the most disconcerting doubts about whether the relationship has run its natural course. You own up to your part in friendships that have become more like placeholders. Years of meaningless, if tenuous, connection have left you hollow.

Detox Your Circle, Activate Your Destiny establishes the premise for removing thirteen toxic elements—people, self-sabotaging behaviors, baggage, and meaningless rituals, to name a few—and demonstrates how decluttering can trigger a very powerful clarity. When we detox our Rolodex, our true nature and essence attract more of who we are. What ensues is a resonance that sets the tone and cosmic parameters for fulfilling destiny.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jan 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781982219826

Ernest Sears Jr

During a management career spanning 22 years, Ernest Sears Jr has worked in C-level roles, winning numerous awards for coaching expertise and creating winning culture. Having earned a Linguistics BA degree from Yale (1989) and an MBA from W.P. Carey School of Business (2002), he focused mainly on building cohesive, self-sufficient, high-performing teams in corporate environments. Mr. Sears taught Ethics in Management as an adjunct professor at University of Phoenix from 2005-2010. After reaching his own turning point and crisis of meaning that triggered the writing of this book, the author retired from corporate leadership positions in 2016 and launched a new business as a lifestyle design consultant and relationship strategy coach. Ernest Sears Jr is the father of two adult college-educated daughters and for the past 25 years, the life partner of Kiana Maria Storey-Sears. Check out http://www.detoxyourcircle.com/

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Copyright © 2019 Ernest Sears Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-1979-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-1978-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-1982-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019900361

Balboa Press rev. date: 1/10/2019

CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Part 1 The 13 Toxic Red Flags

Chapter 1 Red Flag of Apathy

Chapter 2 Red Flag of Blame

Chapter 3 Red Flag of Envy

Chapter 4 Red Flag of Unresolved Baggage

Chapter 5 Red Flag of Complacency

Chapter 6 Red Flag of False Idols

Chapter 7 Red Flag of Time Killers

Chapter 8 Red Flag of Doubt

Chapter 9 Red Flag of Snap Judgment

Chapter 10 Red Flag of Arrogance

Chapter 11 Red Flag of Closed-Mindedness

Chapter 12 Red Flag of Cruelty

Chapter 13 Red Flag of Denial

Part 2 Activate Your Destiny

Chapter 14 From Inspiration to Manifestation

Conclusion - Why Detoxing Your Circle is Critical

Acknowledgments

Appendix - How to Create and Lead Teams

References

About the Author

To my daughters, Elaissia and Kiersten, who have at times offered themselves unwittingly as subjects in the laboratory of my coaching research, consistently leaving me in awe of their brilliance and grace in the face of life’s challenges.

To my wife of 25 years, to whom I owe a lifetime of debt for the grace received and the priceless gift of our two crown jewels, I would like to express deep gratitude and unending love for sharing this journey.

To my mother who has given me a leg up in life by requiring so much so early. I am grateful that I could play an integral role in providing reassurance, solace, and distraction from so much trauma you endured as a teenage mother.

To my brother and sister, my first friends in life, I will always cherish our connection although the years have separated us by circumstances and distance.

And to my best friends who are always there for me—you know who you are—through thick and thin, through many seasons, checking in as if summoned by some divine spiritual tie, with enduring gentleness, sincere fondness, and always with a fierce loyalty, you have my unending devotion and friendship.

Renewal

How do we bury last year’s successes and put to rest its failures?

Why must we forge ahead, resisting the urge to look back?

What should we learn from winter pruning as preparation for spring?

Where do we find the treasure map that charts our life’s patterns?

When do we re-calibrate our hearts to align with the compass of our destiny?

Who must we sacrifice to save the world?

FOREWORD

If you are seeking novel ways to positively impact your personal circle and to effectively catapult your life into the stratosphere of destiny, you have come to the right place. Detox Your Circle leverages a combination of deeply personal life events, boardroom experience, and entrepreneurial insight to help the highly-motivated prune and prepare their life gardens.

We all have a team of important individuals in our lives that helps us reach our life’s purpose and dreams. To increase the likelihood of manifesting the ultimate vision for your life, it’s important to know when to address, correct, and eliminate toxic elements that can wreak havoc on your hard-earned progress.

Have you noticed that a close friend has allowed his midlife crisis to impair his business relationship with your highly profitable client? Does your long-time colleague make off-color comments about people from other cultures? This could damage your brand, your relationship with other players in your market, and your reputation. So how do you address these issues?

Ernest Sears Jr. provides a comprehensive framework for creating a world-class inner circle. Not only will you be primed to withstand the volatility of the marketplace, you will gain the fresh perspective and resilience necessary for navigating the seas of destiny.

Enjoy this journey!

PREFACE

The toxins in our life that threaten to cripple us take many forms. The well-meaning friend who asks, Can you afford the risk? The relative who laments, I never had the chance, why should you? The overt hater who shouts, You’re not good enough. And that nagging voice in your head that combines these, and worse.

Most toxins don’t kill all at once; they work over time to weaken the host. The host grows lethargic, then paralyzed, then finally dies of suffocation.

Isn’t this how toxic people and ideas work in our lives as well? They wear us down and weaken us until we can no longer move or breathe, no longer have the will to live our best lives, and then we give up, suffocated. I think we all know such toxic people, don’t we? And sometimes we are the toxic ones. If you have a sense that a situation is toxic, and you look around the room and can’t figure out who it is, it’s you.

Most of these toxic elements contaminate our lives without our conscious awareness. To cleanse them from our lives—to detox—requires a level of vigilance and effort many of us have not yet achieved.

Sometimes the toxic substances are in the baggage we carry with us. As we move toward purpose—as we move toward our vision of what life should be, our destiny—we are constantly challenged to let go of that baggage, to replace the outdated and outmoded programs running our lives. To move forward, we must lighten our load and make room for expansion, for higher levels of wisdom, for deeper insights, and for the ability to see the horizon more clearly. Often the most difficult thing to do is to let go of those people and entities who have had an important hand in getting us where we are today—relatives, mentors, bosses, friends, organizations, and companies. They have served genuine and important spiritual, emotional, and material ends in the past, but they no longer serve us. We have moved beyond them.

There is an old maxim by an unknown author with the lines: People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. When you figure out which it is, you know exactly what to do. It is our job to figure this out for each person, team, or organization in our lives. We get stuck because we can’t let go of what’s holding us back. We make decisions based on the old programs still running in the background. We don’t want to upset our fathers by not following in their footsteps, our mothers by not going to medical school or marrying our high school sweetheart, our old mentors by moving into a different career, or—fill in the blank. No matter what decision we make, we are going to disappoint someone. So, whether in business or personal circles, we must detox ourselves of these poisonous impulses because only then can we grow into our authentic selves. I don’t mean that we should be cruel and ghost people who are no longer useful to us—that’s just manipulative and mercenary. I do mean that sometimes in a compassionate way we need to re-frame a relationship if that relationship no longer speaks to or supports our authentic selves. With sincere gratitude and thanksgiving, we must assign them the appropriate degree of honor and reverence but leave them behind for us to fully experience the next level of growth, wisdom, and expansion.

Toxic elements can also be paradigms, ideas, or principles that no longer serve us. Indeed, these ways of thinking may never have served us, but we absorbed them out of convenience, association, or proximity—they’re what we grew up with. How many of us have heard these admonitions in one form or another since childhood?

Don’t make waves.

Don’t rock the boat.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

Don’t get too big for your britches.

That’s above your pay grade.

Don’t you know the chain of command?

Speak when you’re spoken to.

Don’t expect much and you won’t be disappointed.

Stick with what you have.

Don’t take risks.

Don’t go out on a limb.

What do all these phrases have in common? They are limiting; they’re all about playing it safe. Sure, there’s a grain of common sense in all of them, and I would never advise to put yourself in true danger, but sometimes to be your authentic self, you must take risks. After all, the journalist Frank Scully coined the phrase with the opposite sentiment: Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is?¹

To live in the truth of our authentic selves, we must take risks, jettison stale ideals, philosophies, concepts, paradigms, principles, and ways of thinking that no longer serve us. New ideas and paradigms are required to move to the new level of insight and wisdom required to be authentic. Adjusting to a new paradigm, though, can be challenging, uncomfortable, and painful, just like a new workout at the gym can be painful. Sometimes the hardest new paradigm to adopt is that we have a right to change the paradigm. That might be the scariest paradigm shift of all. We can’t shift paradigms—we can’t clear the room to grow—unless we eliminate the toxic elements from our lives.

To detox, then, means to rid our lives of the people, situations, models, and paradigms that weaken us with the slow drip of poison; the old programs and patterns we are addicted to that prevent us from reaching our goals. We all have goals for the life we want to live, a vision for our destiny, but something always seems to get in the way.

How do you know if you need to detox? Well, if you think you might have to detox, then you probably do. But I have other ways to figure it out. I call them the 13 Toxic Red Flags. If you see any of the following toxic red flags in yourself or your circle, you likely need to detox. These toxic elements can dramatically influence and ultimately hijack the mission to live the life of purpose you’ve set out on.

The 13 Toxic Red Flags:

1. Apathy

2. The Blame Game

3. Envy

4. Unresolved Baggage

5. Complacency

6. False Idols

7. Time Killers

8. Doubt

9. Snap Judgment

10. Arrogance

11. Closed-Mindedness

12. Cruelty

13. Denial

In Detox Your Circle, Activate Your Destiny, I provide a brief description of each Toxic Red Flag with examples of how to diagnose and address. The 13 Red Flags represent the free radicals in your body or personal circle that must be addressed or removed to preserve its health, longevity, and effectiveness. I have applied these concepts with business partners, acquaintances, friendships, inner circles, and family members.

After spending 22 years in corporate America building high-performing teams and mentoring leaders who moved on to bigger and better things, I came to realize that it’s not enough to work on yourself alone. Almost everything in business, as in life, is done as part of a team, a circle. You can be the most enlightened being on the planet, but if even a single member of your team or circle is toxic—or you are—then the rest of the team is weaker for it. It is the five people you spend the most time with that shape your life, whether at work or