8 ms·

On Improving When Your Friends Aren’t

82 points by acangiano 16y ago

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
lsc 16y ago
>In a way, to put it bluntly, they’re not usefull to me. (yes, I know this was the author quoting /someone else/ but I think the rest of the article was saying something very similar, albeit in a much more tactful way.) Huh. I guess I have a similar exploitive attitude, but it drives me in the opposite direction. Having poor friends is /incredibly useful/ - need help moving but don't want to reciprocate? call up your highschool buddy who works at home depot. He'll be happy to help you out for a few bucks. It's only weird if you make it weird. I've always kind of gravitated towards people who are smarter than I am, so my highschool buddies were an awesome recruiting ground. People who are smart but work cr-p jobs because they lack the social skills or confidence to advance make great employees for your small side businesses. And the great thing about that is I'm helping my friend while I'm exploiting him or her. Most of the people I've hired in this manner have gone on to get "real jobs" after gaining experience working for me. Of course, all this is predicated on your ability to live a different lifestyle from your friends, and being willing to fire a friend. Never hire anyone you can't fire. On the other hand, if you loose a friend every time you fire someone, you are doing it wrong.
- alnayyir 16y ago
  How incredibly self-obsessed and shallow. I guess this is usual for the kind of material that comes from Sebastian. There need be no mystery why the poor have such irrational loathing for the middle and middle-upper class when you witness this kind of attitude. Part of being better person and an exemplar is to improve without an attendant increase in ego. Humility and sincerity are critical virtues to have as a whole person.
  - lsc 16y ago
    so... it is better to watch your friends continue to work in the sandwich shop than to hire them to work on a tech project at below market (but above sandwich shop) wages? I dono about you, but I'd rather be "used" and get the job with opportunities for advancement (and higher wages) I can count several people who were in this position who now make a good bit more money than I do. edit: to be clear, I don't think I'm better than people I've hired. I am more confident, to be sure, but that's something other people value. I don't value confidence very much at all ( I have perhaps more of that than I'd like. But other people eat it up, so why not?) Nearly all my friends are smarter than I am. (I'm not saying that people who are more intelligent are /better people,/ but it's a better standard than money.) and besides that, no competent manager hires people who are not better than he is (or who can not shortly be made better than he is.) Hell, even if you keep score with money, several of the people who have worked for me in the past now make more than I do, and a few make more money than I would be able to make if I was working for someone else.
    - alnayyir 16y ago
      You're missing the point. Both you and Sebastian are tragically self-centered. You shouldn't even be entertaining the thoughts you're having, if you had an ounce of decency. Friends treat each other as equals even when they aren't. This is a lesson I've had to learn and seeing the flip-side, I'm damned glad I did. I'll take humility and genuine friendship. Blogging crassly about how great I am and how hard it is to be so much better than the people I know is obscene. If you lack the discretion and discernment to recognize the vulgarity of this, then we have no common ground and can leave it at that.
      - lsc 16y ago
        Would my actions be "tragically self-centered" or "crass" if I did the same to people I did not know previously? Are you saying that hiring people and turning a profit from their labor is inherently evil? or is that only so when there is a pre-existing relationship? edit: moved this from another comment of mine, as it really is a response to the "crass and vulgar" statement: I'll be the first to admit that I'm not as refined as most people here. You could certainly call me vulgar, in most senses of the word. I certainly lack good breeding and taste. I never went to college.[1] Hell, I spent half my childhood in a mobile home park. But I don't see what's wrong with offering someone a better job than they had before, even if that someone is friend or family, even if I turn a profit on the deal. [1]I am both proud and ashamed that I didn't go to college. Proud, because I am able to earn a middle-class salary without going to school, but also ashamed because to be truthful, I didn't go because I couldn't cut it. My math is pretty abysmal, and there's no way I have the willpower to hold down a full-time job /and/ do homework, and that is something to be ashamed about.
BenSchaechter 16y ago
I can really relate to this post a lot. While I have feelings of being sort of a dick when I come to terms with this, it is completely true. I don't really hang out with a lot of startup people (perhaps I need to). But mostly it is because I really need a break from the scene sometimes. However, my only friends in the area are the same friends I had in high school who aren't doing a whole lot with their lives. It is frustrating to say the least. Just tonight I got text messages from my friends telling me they drunkenly ran in my ex-girlfriend and are all having a great time out at the bars. Meanwhile, I'm sitting programming stuff into the night trying to make a business that could ultimately fail. But I'm learning a lot. Sure, I'm living in near-poverty. But I'm overall really enjoying myself -- even if it is quite lonely. In a way, it is motivating. On the other hand, it bums me out quite a bit.
- alnayyir 16y ago
  This is a better attitude to take to the matter. Just keep working, don't blog about how great you are on the blog whose main purpose is to tell other people about how great you are. What kind of stuff do you work on? (I'm a programmer as well)
  - BenSchaechter 16y ago
    http://gopollgo.com http://gopollgo.com I'm creating a consumer/social polling website set to launch in about a week or so. On a consumer level it is basic. But we're going to offer advanced reporting, etc for bigger brands to connect with Twitter followers / Facebook friends, website visitors, etc. If anyone would like beta access, feel free to shoot me an email in my profile. /shameless-promo
  - zuckerborg 16y ago
    Dude, this is Sebastian Marshall, one of the great strategists of our time. He specializes in winning and communicating the art of winning through his blog. Now to the untrained eye, his posts may come across as the work of a delusional, narcissistic windbag, but if you look deeper, you'll find that with his hectic schedule it's amazing that he has time to write at all. Between fighting off Asian gangsters with high-powered kung fu kicks and hosting charity events for hospitals whose name he misremembers, he still finds the energy to offer priceless career guidance and moral support to patio11. Soak up his wisdom, so that you too may learn the entrepreneur strategies of the winning scientist. As an aside, I would love to read more about his science. I've learned so much about strategy and entrepreneurship and winning from him, but not much yet about science. Please write about your science, Scientist Sebastian, so that I may seek to improve my own science, which has hitherto proven most unfruitful.
PStamatiou 16y ago
I have a very close group of 3 friends that I have known for at least 6 years each. We all come from immigrant families, went to a competitive, top 100 high school and all did well and went to good schools. We're all 24 now and two of them are busy hopping from job to job to find the biggest paycheck, bragging about their $160k base salaries (consulting/private equity) not including bonuses and how they quadrupled their savings with margins trading. Then there's me and my other friend in this group. I've only ever done startups and the closest I've been to a BigCorp job was a yahoo internship. The aforementioned two friends just don't understand the world of startups and think I'm wasting my time and setting myself up for financial disaster. The other friend is on his 7th year of college. He picked majors because they were highly regarded and he saw that we were doing similar things, but did not interest him. Over the years he looked at our relative career success, did not think he possessed any real skills for the workforce and became suicidal, attempting to kill himself twice. Saved the first time because of a malfunctioning old handgun and the second because of a goodbye email he sent to the 3 of us. I check my email way too often and saw the email first and called 911 and then kept him on the phone. I'm not quite sure what the moral is, but it seemed relevant and I wanted to share. I wish my friends did what they loved and not what their peers thought was cool or society deemed worthy. None of them love what they do.
- shrikant 16y ago
  I wish my friends did what they loved and not what their peers thought was cool or society deemed worthy. I wish this for me too, retroactively. I would have had a lot more to show for the 5+ years spent 'conforming to society/peers'.
- swombat 16y ago
  The aforementioned two friends just don't understand the world of startups and think I'm wasting my time and setting myself up for financial disaster. Who knows, they might even be right...
  - ct 16y ago
    Or wrong... If you don't love what you do it's probably not worth it in the long run. Doing a startup isn't necessarily going to put you in a financial disaster. It just makes the end result more volatile. The way I look at it is with life there's a bell curve (maybe not normally distributed but still a curve distribution). Those with a steady consulting job will fall into the "average" middle area of the curve and be "safe" financially and might not ever be poor OR rich for that matter. Those taking risks like in a startup would more invariably end up on one side of the curve (either on the side that makes you poor due to debt etc, or extremely rich but most likely you won't end up as an "average" middle area where everyone else is and regret not taking any chances in your life).
niyazpk 16y ago
After all the books I've read, after all the time I've spent on learning, solving problems and exercising my brain, after all the self-help/marketing/how-to blogs I've gone through, after all the effort I've taken on becoming a better person, after all the sacrifices I've made by going out of my way to help other people to make their lives better, I have found that there are many people who are better than me in many ways I cannot even begin to imagine, not because they try to be, not because they are more intelligent than me, not because they have any incentive to be, not because they are better educated, but probably because they just are, probably because they grasp the beauty of life better than me on a scale that I am not able to comprehend, probably because there is more to life than being successful and being better, whatever that means, or probably because of some other reasons I will never understand.
- Tycho 16y ago
  Maybe they're better looking than you? (but seriously, I don't think making sacrifices is particularly good for your character)
- wahnfrieden 16y ago
  It seems like being depressed over that conclusion is just a form of vanity. It's a fine line between comparing yourself to others in order to learn from them and reevaluate your direction, and comparing to satisfy or starve your ego.
  - niyazpk 16y ago
    Exactly my point. :)
  - mbubb 16y ago
    yes excellent restatement
- mbubb 16y ago
  I liked your post, niyazpk, because it moves from the implicit comparison to looking internally for the reasons one is stuck in such and such a place. Friends are not bad/good people as much as certain relationships are destructive while others are healthy. But this is not a permanent state - and ultimately says more about oneself than one's friends. This pruning off of friends is perhaps a necessary step in some cases - reminds me of the '12-step program' idea of not associating with the people you drank/smoked/particpated in unsafe sex with/etc. But ultimately it says more about the person themselves than it does about the goodness/badness of those friends. There are people who can drink and not have it ruin their lives... If you are not one of them but you are hanging around people who can socially drink - they are not the problematic ones. When we are stuck we tend to look outwards for reasons that we are stuck and place blame externally. There is one of Montaigne's essays that I enjoyed since school days, #4 in book 1 called something like "the soul discharges its passions on false objects when the true ones are wanting". There are some very funny anecdotes - some classical and some more contemporary of people essentially finding external causes for their griefs or gouts. The essay builds to a climax with an example of Ceasar defying Neptune after being shipwrecked and the author ends with a brilliant single sentence paragraph: "But we can never enough decry the disorderly sallies of our minds." This is one example in literature of a remarkable turn from external to internal - a moment of crushing realization that you create most of your own pain and discomfort and the first step to freedom from this is this realization. Whether is it Buddha's Fire Sermon, Eliot's "Waste Land", Rilke's "Headless Torso of Apollo" - this is the answer. Not ditching friends. We move to Portland because we are not doing well in New York (or vice versa). The change in scenery will do us well for 6 months and that might be enough to set on a new track. But more likely you find out you are still the same person internally - that will creep back in. I have had moments in my life where I have been in a magnificent place and yet for whatever reason i happened to be miserable that day. Firenze, Mongolia, Cat Ba Islands in Vietnam. Beautiful striking places and on those days struck with deep blueness (i will not use that oft-misused word depression here). And being in those places intensified the self loathing: "... you asshole - how could you be miserable here!..." And the answer is always the same - because I am miserable. Not because my girlfriend is 8000 miles away (and p'raps not so faithful :-0 ); not because of friends or lack of friends or type of friends.
dustyreagan 16y ago
What does "improving" even mean when it comes to life? Sometimes friends drift apart when their common interests change. The end. Put the ego aside.
- matwood 16y ago
  It's not that simple. What the article describes is a very common problem with people who get healthy and lose a lot of weight. Their 'friends' often end up hindering their goals though often not on purpose. When I talked to a friend of mine about her weight loss the hardest part for her was losing all her other overweight friends. They would constantly ask her why she was getting up at 5am or eating healthy or training for a marathon and then would make comments that it's pointless. They didn't drift apart because their interests changed, she had to cut them out because they were holding her back.
- ryanwaggoner 16y ago
  I want this to be true, but I don't think it is. I really do think a lot of people just kind of drift through life, being reactive rather than proactive, with little in the way of goals or ambition. I don't necessarily know if there's anything wrong with that (topic for another day), but it does seem valid to say that they're not interested in "improving". Maybe that's the wrong word; maybe "optimizing" captures it better. Regardless, some of my best friends are those who I share surprisingly little in terms of common interests. But what we do share is that we don't want a life adrift, and we're working hard to achieve the things we care about. To me, that's what "improving at life" means.
  - antareus 16y ago
    Reactive versus proactive captures the notion perfectly. I'm not content to be reactive. I was that way for too long, but I realized it was a cover for fear. It is hard for me to relate to the reactive mindset now. I feel like codependent-prone individuals smell the change and try to follow you around. I want to be able to relate to everyone well, but there's a point at which the mismatch emerges, and it is unfortunate. It just means my interests are changing.
dsgrweger 16y ago
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VMG 16y ago
I suddenly had the desire to smoke some weed and play tekken my buddies after I read his post
- michaelty 16y ago
  Same here.
xcvgreghre 16y ago
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xcvgreghre 16y ago
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ryandvm 16y ago
Gads, what obnoxious, egotistical drivel. Is there any way we can get a Sebastian Marshall / Tim Ferris filter on Hacker News?
JVerstry 16y ago
I split from some friends about 20 years ago... We were a group of 5 top friends at high school. We were popular, entertaining, going on vacation together, you name it.... At college, we carried on meeting, going to parties, but something became odd for me. It was obvious they were willing to carry on with immature/teenager activities and I wasn't... I just did not enjoy it anymore. It was not in me. I had grown up. I told 3 of them I was not willing to participate to this anymore. The 5th one did not care, we always got along well. In fact, he was participating in those juvenile activities less and less too and developed his own branch of friends. Two really take it badly, as if it was some kind of betrayal. They adopted a dogma attitude. I knew them since I was 5 years old. They reacted emotionally and would not address the maturity issues. It was a one-sided conversation. They carried on their juveniles games until their early thirties. I was even replaced by another guy to fill the gap. When #4 got married, my replacement was invited to the full ceremony and I was only invited to the cocktail. He knew my replacement for a couple of years then, I knew him for more than 20. It was a bit of a shock, but not a real surprise. I knew they were acting juvenile beyond their 20's to cover for their insecurities and lack of will to become mature and responsible. Today, we are connected on Facebook and exchange messages from time to time. I do not regret the split 20 years ago. I got to meet different people and developed new fulfilling relationships.
matwood 16y ago
I think overall his post was spot on. There is an old saying that goes along the lines that 'you are the average of the 5 closest people to you.' This means if all your closest friends are losers you'll likely be a loser too. It's not mean or egotistical to recognize that people you spend the most time with do in fact influence you. It's also a good thing to remove friends that are holding you back. Sports stars probably need to do more of this. They become famous, make a lot of money, but keep hanging out with the friends from 'the hood' and end up all sorts of trouble. Another good example are people who lose a lot of weight. Whether on purpose or not their friends often hold them back. Losing all her friends was the hardest thing a friend of mine had to deal with when she finally decided to lose weight and get in shape.
sdghrth 16y ago
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dools 16y ago
Your friends don't have to be "useful to you". Real friends are waiting there for you when you take a break from work to have fun, relax and shoot the breeze. I've worked maniacally for the past 4 or 5 years and declined many many social invitations because I was focused on building my business. I would never EVER express that as "improving when my friends aren't" and I find this attitude deplorable. They're just living life differently to me. They don't get in the way of the way I want to live my life at all and when I take a break I go hang out with them and we have fun - it's just that I don't do that very often. There is no difference between focusing on a business, focusing on education, focusing on raising a child or on a new relationship. It seems like such a cliche that you "improve" somehow and leave everyone else behind and then see them later in the street with your new friends and ignore them as you walk by and make them all jealous with how much better you've become. Life just doesn't have to be like that. True friends are friends forever regardless of whatever life projects you're working on and if you're incapable of maintaining friendships with people who aren't living exactly the same life as you then there is something wrong with you. The whole "I want to win so I surround myself with winners" approach is just admitting that you're so susceptible to peer pressure that the only way you can succeed in life is to set yourself up with a bunch of friends who will force you to succeed. That's a strategy for addicts, not winners.

82 points by acangiano 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

lsc 16y ago

>In a way, to put it bluntly, they’re not usefull to me. (yes, I know this was the author quoting /someone else/ but I think the rest of the article was saying something very similar, albeit in a much more tactful way.) Huh. I guess I have a similar exploitive attitude, but it drives me in the opposite direction. Having poor friends is /incredibly useful/ - need help moving but don't want to reciprocate? call up your highschool buddy who works at home depot. He'll be happy to help you out for a few bucks. It's only weird if you make it weird. I've always kind of gravitated towards people who are smarter than I am, so my highschool buddies were an awesome recruiting ground. People who are smart but work cr-p jobs because they lack the social skills or confidence to advance make great employees for your small side businesses. And the great thing about that is I'm helping my friend while I'm exploiting him or her. Most of the people I've hired in this manner have gone on to get "real jobs" after gaining experience working for me. Of course, all this is predicated on your ability to live a different lifestyle from your friends, and being willing to fire a friend. Never hire anyone you can't fire. On the other hand, if you loose a friend every time you fire someone, you are doing it wrong.

alnayyir 16y ago
How incredibly self-obsessed and shallow. I guess this is usual for the kind of material that comes from Sebastian. There need be no mystery why the poor have such irrational loathing for the middle and middle-upper class when you witness this kind of attitude. Part of being better person and an exemplar is to improve without an attendant increase in ego. Humility and sincerity are critical virtues to have as a whole person.
- lsc 16y ago
  so... it is better to watch your friends continue to work in the sandwich shop than to hire them to work on a tech project at below market (but above sandwich shop) wages? I dono about you, but I'd rather be "used" and get the job with opportunities for advancement (and higher wages) I can count several people who were in this position who now make a good bit more money than I do. edit: to be clear, I don't think I'm better than people I've hired. I am more confident, to be sure, but that's something other people value. I don't value confidence very much at all ( I have perhaps more of that than I'd like. But other people eat it up, so why not?) Nearly all my friends are smarter than I am. (I'm not saying that people who are more intelligent are /better people,/ but it's a better standard than money.) and besides that, no competent manager hires people who are not better than he is (or who can not shortly be made better than he is.) Hell, even if you keep score with money, several of the people who have worked for me in the past now make more than I do, and a few make more money than I would be able to make if I was working for someone else.
  - alnayyir 16y ago
    You're missing the point. Both you and Sebastian are tragically self-centered. You shouldn't even be entertaining the thoughts you're having, if you had an ounce of decency. Friends treat each other as equals even when they aren't. This is a lesson I've had to learn and seeing the flip-side, I'm damned glad I did. I'll take humility and genuine friendship. Blogging crassly about how great I am and how hard it is to be so much better than the people I know is obscene. If you lack the discretion and discernment to recognize the vulgarity of this, then we have no common ground and can leave it at that.
    - lsc 16y ago
      Would my actions be "tragically self-centered" or "crass" if I did the same to people I did not know previously? Are you saying that hiring people and turning a profit from their labor is inherently evil? or is that only so when there is a pre-existing relationship? edit: moved this from another comment of mine, as it really is a response to the "crass and vulgar" statement: I'll be the first to admit that I'm not as refined as most people here. You could certainly call me vulgar, in most senses of the word. I certainly lack good breeding and taste. I never went to college.[1] Hell, I spent half my childhood in a mobile home park. But I don't see what's wrong with offering someone a better job than they had before, even if that someone is friend or family, even if I turn a profit on the deal. [1]I am both proud and ashamed that I didn't go to college. Proud, because I am able to earn a middle-class salary without going to school, but also ashamed because to be truthful, I didn't go because I couldn't cut it. My math is pretty abysmal, and there's no way I have the willpower to hold down a full-time job /and/ do homework, and that is something to be ashamed about.

BenSchaechter 16y ago

I can really relate to this post a lot. While I have feelings of being sort of a dick when I come to terms with this, it is completely true. I don't really hang out with a lot of startup people (perhaps I need to). But mostly it is because I really need a break from the scene sometimes. However, my only friends in the area are the same friends I had in high school who aren't doing a whole lot with their lives. It is frustrating to say the least. Just tonight I got text messages from my friends telling me they drunkenly ran in my ex-girlfriend and are all having a great time out at the bars. Meanwhile, I'm sitting programming stuff into the night trying to make a business that could ultimately fail. But I'm learning a lot. Sure, I'm living in near-poverty. But I'm overall really enjoying myself -- even if it is quite lonely. In a way, it is motivating. On the other hand, it bums me out quite a bit.

alnayyir 16y ago
This is a better attitude to take to the matter. Just keep working, don't blog about how great you are on the blog whose main purpose is to tell other people about how great you are. What kind of stuff do you work on? (I'm a programmer as well)
- BenSchaechter 16y ago
  http://gopollgo.com http://gopollgo.com I'm creating a consumer/social polling website set to launch in about a week or so. On a consumer level it is basic. But we're going to offer advanced reporting, etc for bigger brands to connect with Twitter followers / Facebook friends, website visitors, etc. If anyone would like beta access, feel free to shoot me an email in my profile. /shameless-promo
- zuckerborg 16y ago
  Dude, this is Sebastian Marshall, one of the great strategists of our time. He specializes in winning and communicating the art of winning through his blog. Now to the untrained eye, his posts may come across as the work of a delusional, narcissistic windbag, but if you look deeper, you'll find that with his hectic schedule it's amazing that he has time to write at all. Between fighting off Asian gangsters with high-powered kung fu kicks and hosting charity events for hospitals whose name he misremembers, he still finds the energy to offer priceless career guidance and moral support to patio11. Soak up his wisdom, so that you too may learn the entrepreneur strategies of the winning scientist. As an aside, I would love to read more about his science. I've learned so much about strategy and entrepreneurship and winning from him, but not much yet about science. Please write about your science, Scientist Sebastian, so that I may seek to improve my own science, which has hitherto proven most unfruitful.

PStamatiou 16y ago

I have a very close group of 3 friends that I have known for at least 6 years each. We all come from immigrant families, went to a competitive, top 100 high school and all did well and went to good schools. We're all 24 now and two of them are busy hopping from job to job to find the biggest paycheck, bragging about their $160k base salaries (consulting/private equity) not including bonuses and how they quadrupled their savings with margins trading. Then there's me and my other friend in this group. I've only ever done startups and the closest I've been to a BigCorp job was a yahoo internship. The aforementioned two friends just don't understand the world of startups and think I'm wasting my time and setting myself up for financial disaster. The other friend is on his 7th year of college. He picked majors because they were highly regarded and he saw that we were doing similar things, but did not interest him. Over the years he looked at our relative career success, did not think he possessed any real skills for the workforce and became suicidal, attempting to kill himself twice. Saved the first time because of a malfunctioning old handgun and the second because of a goodbye email he sent to the 3 of us. I check my email way too often and saw the email first and called 911 and then kept him on the phone. I'm not quite sure what the moral is, but it seemed relevant and I wanted to share. I wish my friends did what they loved and not what their peers thought was cool or society deemed worthy. None of them love what they do.

shrikant 16y ago
I wish my friends did what they loved and not what their peers thought was cool or society deemed worthy. I wish this for me too, retroactively. I would have had a lot more to show for the 5+ years spent 'conforming to society/peers'.
swombat 16y ago
The aforementioned two friends just don't understand the world of startups and think I'm wasting my time and setting myself up for financial disaster. Who knows, they might even be right...
- ct 16y ago
  Or wrong... If you don't love what you do it's probably not worth it in the long run. Doing a startup isn't necessarily going to put you in a financial disaster. It just makes the end result more volatile. The way I look at it is with life there's a bell curve (maybe not normally distributed but still a curve distribution). Those with a steady consulting job will fall into the "average" middle area of the curve and be "safe" financially and might not ever be poor OR rich for that matter. Those taking risks like in a startup would more invariably end up on one side of the curve (either on the side that makes you poor due to debt etc, or extremely rich but most likely you won't end up as an "average" middle area where everyone else is and regret not taking any chances in your life).

niyazpk 16y ago

After all the books I've read, after all the time I've spent on learning, solving problems and exercising my brain, after all the self-help/marketing/how-to blogs I've gone through, after all the effort I've taken on becoming a better person, after all the sacrifices I've made by going out of my way to help other people to make their lives better, I have found that there are many people who are better than me in many ways I cannot even begin to imagine, not because they try to be, not because they are more intelligent than me, not because they have any incentive to be, not because they are better educated, but probably because they just are, probably because they grasp the beauty of life better than me on a scale that I am not able to comprehend, probably because there is more to life than being successful and being better, whatever that means, or probably because of some other reasons I will never understand.

Tycho 16y ago
Maybe they're better looking than you? (but seriously, I don't think making sacrifices is particularly good for your character)
wahnfrieden 16y ago
It seems like being depressed over that conclusion is just a form of vanity. It's a fine line between comparing yourself to others in order to learn from them and reevaluate your direction, and comparing to satisfy or starve your ego.
- niyazpk 16y ago
  Exactly my point. :)
- mbubb 16y ago
  yes excellent restatement
mbubb 16y ago
I liked your post, niyazpk, because it moves from the implicit comparison to looking internally for the reasons one is stuck in such and such a place. Friends are not bad/good people as much as certain relationships are destructive while others are healthy. But this is not a permanent state - and ultimately says more about oneself than one's friends. This pruning off of friends is perhaps a necessary step in some cases - reminds me of the '12-step program' idea of not associating with the people you drank/smoked/particpated in unsafe sex with/etc. But ultimately it says more about the person themselves than it does about the goodness/badness of those friends. There are people who can drink and not have it ruin their lives... If you are not one of them but you are hanging around people who can socially drink - they are not the problematic ones. When we are stuck we tend to look outwards for reasons that we are stuck and place blame externally. There is one of Montaigne's essays that I enjoyed since school days, #4 in book 1 called something like "the soul discharges its passions on false objects when the true ones are wanting". There are some very funny anecdotes - some classical and some more contemporary of people essentially finding external causes for their griefs or gouts. The essay builds to a climax with an example of Ceasar defying Neptune after being shipwrecked and the author ends with a brilliant single sentence paragraph: "But we can never enough decry the disorderly sallies of our minds." This is one example in literature of a remarkable turn from external to internal - a moment of crushing realization that you create most of your own pain and discomfort and the first step to freedom from this is this realization. Whether is it Buddha's Fire Sermon, Eliot's "Waste Land", Rilke's "Headless Torso of Apollo" - this is the answer. Not ditching friends. We move to Portland because we are not doing well in New York (or vice versa). The change in scenery will do us well for 6 months and that might be enough to set on a new track. But more likely you find out you are still the same person internally - that will creep back in. I have had moments in my life where I have been in a magnificent place and yet for whatever reason i happened to be miserable that day. Firenze, Mongolia, Cat Ba Islands in Vietnam. Beautiful striking places and on those days struck with deep blueness (i will not use that oft-misused word depression here). And being in those places intensified the self loathing: "... you asshole - how could you be miserable here!..." And the answer is always the same - because I am miserable. Not because my girlfriend is 8000 miles away (and p'raps not so faithful :-0 ); not because of friends or lack of friends or type of friends.

dustyreagan 16y ago

What does "improving" even mean when it comes to life? Sometimes friends drift apart when their common interests change. The end. Put the ego aside.

matwood 16y ago
It's not that simple. What the article describes is a very common problem with people who get healthy and lose a lot of weight. Their 'friends' often end up hindering their goals though often not on purpose. When I talked to a friend of mine about her weight loss the hardest part for her was losing all her other overweight friends. They would constantly ask her why she was getting up at 5am or eating healthy or training for a marathon and then would make comments that it's pointless. They didn't drift apart because their interests changed, she had to cut them out because they were holding her back.
ryanwaggoner 16y ago
I want this to be true, but I don't think it is. I really do think a lot of people just kind of drift through life, being reactive rather than proactive, with little in the way of goals or ambition. I don't necessarily know if there's anything wrong with that (topic for another day), but it does seem valid to say that they're not interested in "improving". Maybe that's the wrong word; maybe "optimizing" captures it better. Regardless, some of my best friends are those who I share surprisingly little in terms of common interests. But what we do share is that we don't want a life adrift, and we're working hard to achieve the things we care about. To me, that's what "improving at life" means.
- antareus 16y ago
  Reactive versus proactive captures the notion perfectly. I'm not content to be reactive. I was that way for too long, but I realized it was a cover for fear. It is hard for me to relate to the reactive mindset now. I feel like codependent-prone individuals smell the change and try to follow you around. I want to be able to relate to everyone well, but there's a point at which the mismatch emerges, and it is unfortunate. It just means my interests are changing.

dsgrweger 16y ago

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VMG 16y ago

I suddenly had the desire to smoke some weed and play tekken my buddies after I read his post

michaelty 16y ago
Same here.

xcvgreghre 16y ago

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xcvgreghre 16y ago

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ryandvm 16y ago

Gads, what obnoxious, egotistical drivel. Is there any way we can get a Sebastian Marshall / Tim Ferris filter on Hacker News?

JVerstry 16y ago

I split from some friends about 20 years ago... We were a group of 5 top friends at high school. We were popular, entertaining, going on vacation together, you name it.... At college, we carried on meeting, going to parties, but something became odd for me. It was obvious they were willing to carry on with immature/teenager activities and I wasn't... I just did not enjoy it anymore. It was not in me. I had grown up. I told 3 of them I was not willing to participate to this anymore. The 5th one did not care, we always got along well. In fact, he was participating in those juvenile activities less and less too and developed his own branch of friends. Two really take it badly, as if it was some kind of betrayal. They adopted a dogma attitude. I knew them since I was 5 years old. They reacted emotionally and would not address the maturity issues. It was a one-sided conversation. They carried on their juveniles games until their early thirties. I was even replaced by another guy to fill the gap. When #4 got married, my replacement was invited to the full ceremony and I was only invited to the cocktail. He knew my replacement for a couple of years then, I knew him for more than 20. It was a bit of a shock, but not a real surprise. I knew they were acting juvenile beyond their 20's to cover for their insecurities and lack of will to become mature and responsible. Today, we are connected on Facebook and exchange messages from time to time. I do not regret the split 20 years ago. I got to meet different people and developed new fulfilling relationships.

matwood 16y ago

I think overall his post was spot on. There is an old saying that goes along the lines that 'you are the average of the 5 closest people to you.' This means if all your closest friends are losers you'll likely be a loser too. It's not mean or egotistical to recognize that people you spend the most time with do in fact influence you. It's also a good thing to remove friends that are holding you back. Sports stars probably need to do more of this. They become famous, make a lot of money, but keep hanging out with the friends from 'the hood' and end up all sorts of trouble. Another good example are people who lose a lot of weight. Whether on purpose or not their friends often hold them back. Losing all her friends was the hardest thing a friend of mine had to deal with when she finally decided to lose weight and get in shape.

sdghrth 16y ago

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dools 16y ago

Your friends don't have to be "useful to you". Real friends are waiting there for you when you take a break from work to have fun, relax and shoot the breeze. I've worked maniacally for the past 4 or 5 years and declined many many social invitations because I was focused on building my business. I would never EVER express that as "improving when my friends aren't" and I find this attitude deplorable. They're just living life differently to me. They don't get in the way of the way I want to live my life at all and when I take a break I go hang out with them and we have fun - it's just that I don't do that very often. There is no difference between focusing on a business, focusing on education, focusing on raising a child or on a new relationship. It seems like such a cliche that you "improve" somehow and leave everyone else behind and then see them later in the street with your new friends and ignore them as you walk by and make them all jealous with how much better you've become. Life just doesn't have to be like that. True friends are friends forever regardless of whatever life projects you're working on and if you're incapable of maintaining friendships with people who aren't living exactly the same life as you then there is something wrong with you. The whole "I want to win so I surround myself with winners" approach is just admitting that you're so susceptible to peer pressure that the only way you can succeed in life is to set yourself up with a bunch of friends who will force you to succeed. That's a strategy for addicts, not winners.