First of all, it's nice to see Malaysians other than myself dabbling in entrepreneurship. As a Malaysian, I know what it's like trying to run a start-up locally

First of all, it's nice to see Malaysians other than myself dabbling in entrepreneurship. As a Malaysian, I know what it's like trying to run a start-up locally; the environment is just too non-conducive, for various reasons I'm sure you're familiar with. My advice is to try to dissociate yourself from all the noise out there (all the get-rich-quick seminars, how-to-make-millions-on-the-internet books, work-from-home business "opportunities", etc.) and immerse yourself in the real gems of knowledge (e.g. blogs by entrepreneurs, Hacker News, TechCrunch, etc.) to get the right paradigm. Second advice, get new friends. Go to local start-up gatherings and know people. Best of all, get incubated in a local incubator. Unfortunately, if you depend heavily on social validation and you're not self-contained socio-emotionally (i.e. you feel the need to "hang out" and "talk" to someone all the time just to be functional), which you sound like you are, I think this might be a painful change to make. If you've identified your current friends as a negative influence on your ambitions and personal objectives, you know it's time to discard them. The truth is that your current friends are probably a dime a dozen. If you want fight the negative influence, the only option is to dissociate yourself from them, not to try to "manage" it or, worse, to try to change them. Start spending more time with your family instead to fulfill your socio-emotional needs.