No one goes it alone. No matter where you live, what work you do, how you spend your leisure time, you are not alone. But who are your partners in life? Who are the people that you look to for inspiration? The people who complement you in some way. Who are your partners in life?
Look around you. Look at the last few people you have spent time with. Are they your partners? Do they build you up? Do they allow you the space to imagine better a better world? Do they make you want to be successful?
I am lucky to have amazing partners. My clients, my designers, my developers, my community online. My friends also, those who I spend the great majority of my free time with, are all fantastic. But it is a constant struggle to stay abreast of leechers, and sycophants and emotional vampires. They are out there folks, and often they are right in front of our eyes. Orwellian wisdom time:
To see what is in front of one’s nose requires constant struggle
So true. We are our own worst enemies. We often find ourselves doing damage to ourselves, our careers, our relationships. And we don’t often know it until it is too late. Until situations devolve into a lowest common denominator and the TRUTH that Orwell was alluding to, which was staring us right in the face, becomes painfully obvious.
What does it mean to work with good partners?
It means that you are going to meet a lot of people. It means that you will make a lot of friends. And it means you will lose a great deal of them. To surround yourself with the right people first means that you must surround yourself with the wrong people. The people who bring you down. The people who steal from you. The people who take and want and need. The people who even allow you some comfort. By associating with these people, you are giving yourself a free pass to behave beneath yourself. To behave in a way that is easier, requires less effort, but which leads us to unfulfilled miserable places.
I make friends quickly, but I lose them even faster. This has been true for me for a long time. It isn’t funny nor is it meant to be. It is actually quite sad.
I don’t want to be alone. But I do require being surrounded by good people. The people who make me imagine a future where I am better, where the world around me is better, where anything is possible, even if its not possible. That peering into a better universe is crucial to our growth. The ephemeral glances we get at a better world, a world where we are more WE than we have ever been. This is the reason to look for only the best partners in life.
Image Source: Foxtongue on Flickr
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Great stuff. So true on many levels. Sometimes we are always looking to the shiny new friend, and we don’t appreciate the partners we already have. Sometimes I think we aren’t rational enough with our connections, both personal and professional. Why not assess the value of our friends instead of just throwing them into one general category?
.-= Eric´s last blog ..An 8-step plan for social media spring cleaning =-.
Notice I added the CFA Charter to my name designation on this comment because it makes me look more sophisticated. Only you and 5 million other people know the TRUTH.
We all get what we need and deserve. It was quite astute of you to point out that even the people who allow you some comfort are detrimental. Well then again, we all need someone to lean on…
Anyway just desserts aside, I have been consumed lately with this notion of right and wrong, actions and reactions, the balance of the universe. A free happy pill is not free, it costs you an equal amount of sadness and pain and lost sleep (feel me?). I feel this in life, in love and in business. In business things are somewhat easier to quantify and conceptualize, seeing scammers and black-hats make a short and unsustainable buck instead of the long term wealth that honesty and true value propositions will deliver. In life I feel myself being part of a good world or a bad one, a good one in which I help tourists with directions and don’t send them to Harlem, and a bad one in which I mug them. In love, well suffice to say I’ve messed that up too.
Ultimately as one wise program says you can only deal with yourself. So with that said do well, do good, be honest, work hard, and watch the balance of the universe unfold to your favor, in its own due time. It’s easy to surround yourself with other miscreants and comforters but it’s not creating real value, something that takes strength and perseverance and a bit of sucking it up.
(btw I sent you an email, something for discriminating eyes, let me know what you think)
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