In this life, you can meet people and know that they have your best interests at heart, but how sure are you that they wish you the best things in life? Well, these are the risks we take in life.

You meet people, get to know and trust them so that they get to know your strengths and ambitions in life. What if those strengths and ambitions make them feel that you are going to do better in life so that they secretly plan your downfall? Laughter and smiles can hide so many dangerous things in life. They can laugh with you today and be the reason for your hardships tomorrow.

Choose wisely the company you keep; they can either make or break you. What appears outside might not be as good as what’s inside, so don’t judge a book by its cover.

Here is the story of a young man who thought he had great friends in his life until they changed his life for the worst; and a girl who feared the young man, thinking he was a thug. This girl regularly saw this young man in her area and concluded that he might be a thug. The reason this girl thought the young man was a thug was because he had a strange walk. He was a smoker and he was not the kind of a guy who would worry to dress up to look presentable.

Secretly, the girl was afraid of him and wouldn’t wish to bump into him in a place where there were no people for fear of being mugged by him. One lucky day, the young man approached the girl and despite what the girl thought of him, she gave him her attention. Walking together, this young man felt the need to explain why he ended up the way he was. He explained that he got involved with the kind of friends who would hate you for doing better things in life than them. Unfortunately, he got in too deep with substance abuse and that is how his friends managed to destroy his life. After introspection, this young man realised that the company he was keeping was toxic and he needed to distance himself from this kind of life.

After this girl heard the truth about this young man, she learned a very important lesson in life that she should never, ever judge people just by looking at them. As embarrassing as it was for her to admit her wrong judgment towards this young man, she overcame her fear of thinking the worst of him. She started bumping into this young man more often and they would greet, have short conversations and then depart. The moral of the story is that we tend to judge people without knowing their real experiences or the situations that made them turn out the way we see them.

Sometimes we make our own conclusions about people just by looking at them. The question is: How can you judge something you don’t know? Do looks determine who a person is inside? This is an important lesson. Most of the time we do things, not because that’s what we want, but because of conditions from home or the area we live in. Our surroundings and the company we keep always influence the decisions we make. Just because a person became trapped in a negative life doesn’t mean he or she should be persecuted forever. You can unexpectedly fall, but how you get back up depends entirely on you. Mistakes cannot determine a person’s destiny, but choices do.

Convicts or recovering drug addicts can amazingly transform their lives and make the world a better place. Life’s lessons teach us that it’s not how perfectly people see you, but how they get inspired by your hard work and determination and how they are motivated by the struggles and challenges you encountered in your life.

It takes the right choices to be where you wish to be. Past mistakes cannot be the reason people see themselves as failures because we were not born failures but conquerors. A small step to the right path is always a great start. No matter how badly you were influenced by the company you keep, excuses can never give you the change you want to see in yourself.
Mistakes will always be made, but whether you learn from or repeat them depends on how you see life and what you want to see happening in your life.