I heard once a comment or quote that said something to the affect,
"Do learn from negative people, is to lower yourself to their thinking and to learn from their vast years of mediocrity"
With that said, I think it pays sometimes to reflect on who we listen too in our life, and more important, who we strive to please and be life. I think as Witnesses, we only followed the negative thinkers, as the message was all about negativity. Now we have a choice to be something else, and to listen to something else. Yet as a mental trap, I think we have drank at the tit of negative thinking for so long that when we hear it, it taste familiar and it makes us comfortable. When in reality, we need to ween ourselves into realizing that negative thinking not only makes you a mediocre specimen of life, but it also makes you unhappy, unhealthy, and down right mentally poor.
I bring this up, only because if I were to point out the one thing I have learned the most from leaving the Witnesses and dealing with the new world I opened myself up too. It would be that turning from one negative way of life to another negative way of life. Whether it be another controlling religion, relationship or just a thought pattern. Will lead to a far windier road of exit, with far more problems, then an exit that truly strives to change your thought pattern and actually take the time to realize what your freedom is all about and express it, breath it in and take the time to actually think about how good it is to simply be alive.