This book will teach you how to recognise and liberate yourself from negative relationships. It will also teach how you to create right conditions for a full and happy life: a way of living with greater motivation, flow, success, joy and satisfaction. In short: it will help you upgrade your life. “Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.” This saying, often attributed to Freud, alludes to the way in which partners, friends and family can affect our lives in malign ways. Did you know that the quality of the people around us is a major determinant of our success, failure and even the robustness of our mental health? More than we realise, these people also influence our thinking, beliefs and principles. Any of us would agree that it is preferable to surround ourselves with energy and encouragement than with negativity, resentment and those who try to drag us down. The problem is: how do we recognise whether someone is good for us or not? And how do we surround ourselves with the “right” people: those will encourage, challenge and inspire us? Criminologist Viola Möbius has many years of experience observing the hurdles and pitfalls of human behaviour and the ways in which we engage with one another. In this guide, she explains how to critically examine and choose the people we keep close to us. Möbius describes the red flags that should warn us to end a relationship and how to go about doing so with confidence.