Hello again! Welcome to the new subscribers who’ve joined since last week.
I’m really proud of this piece. It’s about friends, the hommies.
Your friends are your tribe and a powerful source of influence—perhaps the most powerful. However, I get the impression that young people tend to compare themselves to their friends. Always looking at the scoreboard in other words. That’s self-defeating and generates a washing machine effect that only exaggerates your insecurities.
The writer Sinon Sinek says that your friends are there to admire. Ask yourself, “What are they doing that I can learn from?”
If you focus on your own game, then their strengths will elevate your weaknesses.
And well, read on soldier.
Surround Yourself With Strong Friends Who Want To Win More Than You
Friends who won’t judge you
I’m a terrible friend in many ways.
I ignore group chats because, in my head, I’m above talking about last night’s hockey game. I forget birthdays when everyone remembers mine. I often turn down happy hours because I’d rather watch Netflix.
But I owe a lot to my friends. They’re a progressive, driven bunch. Each with an acute self-awareness and each intently focused on long-term goals.
I like to think some of that has rubbed off on me.
Your friends are your tribe and a powerful source of influence . Stick around your tribe long enough, and their habits and beliefs will mirror your habits and beliefs.
So If you want to reach your potential, it helps to surround yourself with friends who know what it takes to succeed.
Friends who want to win—perhaps more than you do.
Friends who know what it means to build something
Building anything meaningful begins with a courageous decision.
It begins with sacrificing immediate comforts for hard work. One of those comforts will probably be camaraderie with your friends.
I see it all the time in my hometown, and I’m sure every hometown shares a similar quality. Friends stuck together since high school, all with mediocre jobs, Ubering to the same bar, and talking about the same annual ski trip. If one person dares to pursue a bigger life, then jealously and resentment stretch the bond.
A strong friend group pushes each other and doesn’t let anyone settle. There’s no room for resentment because each person is concerned with their own goals.
Surround yourself with people who know how hard it is to build. Their empathy will block any resentment.
Friends who carry you through growing pains
The decision to build something meaningful is not followed by paradise. It’s followed by a long, arduous sojourn through the desert.
Passion alone will not carry you through the desert: The agony of failure, the rejections, the injustices. You need to summon another word — grit. And a lot of it.
I started a newsletter last year called Yo Pro Library. About a month in, I felt the sinking feeling of failure. Like I had made the wrong choice, that I was in over my head. I reached out to my entrepreneurial friends and explained how lost I felt. They laughed as if to let me know the world hadn’t ended.
“Oh, yea! I’ve been there before,” they said and filled me in on what to do next.
6 months later and my newsletter is stronger than ever.
It’s possible to be gritty on your own, but like the Spartan warriors of ancient Greece, driving and bullying their comrades to greatness, it’s easier to achieve grit in a group.
Friends who won’t judge you
I know people who still act like it’s high school.
People who bounce from job to job, girlfriend to girlfriend, paranoid about what their friends think, and terrified to push themselves. People who never grow up and spend their free time gossiping about the failures of others.
I’m grateful for my first friend group. Every time we get together, we pick up right where we left off. We can be serious with each other, but we can also sit around talking shit for hours. We are as close as friends get, and yet, we’ve always had separate lives. We played different sports, attended different colleges, interested in different things, and now, we all live in different cities.
Friends can become overdependent, even muddy each other. Not us. We always respected each other’s space and never judged. We share the confidence that each man knows exactly what they need to succeed — and only them.
It doesn’t sound like much, but that’s when friendship becomes power.
Never judge your friends. Never, never, never.
Friends who fight entitlement
You want friends who prefer the daily grind to the next Cancun vacation.
Not those cold and timed souls who work for the weekend and terrified of Sunday evenings.
When you tell your friends that you can’t go out because you’re studying, working on a project, or need a night off, you shouldn’t receive a barrage of guilt trip texts. “C’mon man, again?” They should say, “Alright, my man!”
You want friends who get it and don’t take rejection personally. Why? Because they’ve been there before.
Strong friend groups work hard, play hard, and celebrate when it’s earned.
Friends who accept you in your entirety
I’ve never had a falling out with a friend. I talk to some more than others, but never a relationship-ending fight.
I’m told falling outs are common among millennials, which doesn’t make me feel confident in the prospects of our generation.
Leadership requires empathy. The wisdom to know that a mistake is just that — a mistake. It doesn’t define one’s character. Our lives are not judged by a single action or even a series of actions. We are judged by the entirety of our lives.
Words expressed in anger that damaged your fragile pride should not destroy true friendship. Our twenties are complex enough as it is.
It helps when your friends are patient with you, and you’re patient with them in return.
My friends aren’t perfect, and I’m also thankful for that because neither I’m I.
MLB manager Terry Francona described it well when talking about the 2004 Boston Red Sox team who won the World Series:
“We have a lot of characters who also happen to have character.”
The very definition of a strong friend group. I hope you’ve been as lucky as I have.