Two suggestions:

1. You can throw someone out of your life without throwing them out of your heart. However, make no mistake that you will encounter many people in business and elsewhere that you need to keep out of your life at all costs.

For example, like or not, there is a statistically meaningful number of bad players in the direct marketing and Internet marketing worlds.

Love everybody? Sure why not?

But no one should mistake this as a directive to trust and work with everyone. It is literally a jungle out there, especially for “newbies” who are the favorite target of predators.

I don’t want to get all Biblical on you, but a great line of advice from the Good Book: “Be as wise as a serpent and as gentle as a dove.”

2. Your comment on gratitude and confidence suggests a great interview question:

“Name some of the people who have had the biggest positive effect on your life and how they helped and/or inspired you?”

If you get a “deer in the headlights” on this question, you may be dealing with someone who has a serious gratitude deficit.

This is a bad sign in an individual for numerous reasons. These folks tend to discount or develop total amnesia about the good others have done for them. If you hire or work with them, this will include you. The loyalty quotient of such people is near and sometimes even sub-zero. Grief – for you – will usually follow at some point if you get involved with them.