Show Me Your Friends
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- A Magic Word Called Empathy
- The Curse of Conformity
- Show Me Your Friends
Show me your friends and I will tell you what kind of person you are. The company you keep reflects on you. Birds of a feather flock together. People assume you are just like the people you hang out with. Have you ever done an audit of the kind of people you allow into your space?
Guilty By Association
If you hang out with thieves, do not be surprised if people start keeping a closer eye on their valuables when you are in the vicinity. If you hang out with thieves, do not be surprised if police knock on your door one day as “part of the investigation”.
You are judged by the company you keep. In the court of public opinion, you may be accused, tried and even condemned just by the kind of company you keep. Be conscious about the friends you have. Their moral aptitude is assumed to be similar to yours.
President Barack Obama found himself on a tight corner based on the company he had kept. He had to distance himself from a number of people to avoid being judged and condemned by association. He had to let go of his former church pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and spent considerable resources clarifying his association with (and distancing himself from) Louis Farrakhan and Bill Ayers.
Just Let Go
If you are serious about your success, you may have to let go of some people from your life. Get rid of negative people from your life. Let them go. They will drag you down. Get rid of people who push you down. Do not spend time and energy trying to gain acceptance. You are good as you are. You do not need anyone’s permission to succeed. Be ruthless and get rid of people who waste your time and take your focus away from your goals. You will be happier in the long run if you do that.
Common Interests
The kind of activities you do will determine who ends up on your address book. If you are always at the pub, you will have more drinking buddies than industry friends. If you spend a lot of time in bible study groups you will have more religious types as friends.
Determine what kinds of activities are closely knit with your mission in life. Pursue those and you will get friends based on your common interests. If you want to run your own business and you spend most of your time at a “jobless corner’, or with people who work for “the man”, you will start thinking like them and your dream will remain just a dream. Go out there and meet people who share your vision and interests.
Comfort Zone Friends
When I first came to Australia in 1998, I made quite a few Kenyan friends here because we viewed life from a similar perspective. We spoke the same languages (English, Swahili and Sheng). It was comfortable having Kenyans as friends in a foreign country. But they are comfort zone friends. I do not have to put much effort or do anything extra to be friends with them. That feels good. Unfortunately, that comfort zone can limit the potential for success.
To succeed in business and life in general, I have had to reach out to other people, from diverse backgrounds. There are only about 3000 Kenyans in Perth, Western Australia, a city of 1,554,769 people. For that reason, I have had to make friends from beyond my comfort zone to be able to succeed.
Do you only hang out with only people you are comfortable with? Give yourself a challenge, try and make one new friend from beyond your comfort zone every week. Did you know that you could have a different outlook in life if you expanded your friendship circles?
Friendship Circles
I admire people who have a lot of friends. However, I personally only have friends that I can count with my fingers in one hand. These are people who are in my close friendship network and I will walk or run for miles for them. I will do a lot for them and they would do the same for me.
Beyond the close friends, I have friends that I group in “circles”. I have church friends, work friends, former schoolmates, internet friends and family friends. I find it really important to clarify what kind of person a certain friend is. I have hundreds of acquaintances because of my social nature, but I always make sure I understand what “circle” each person is in, in my life. Each circle of friends has a certain influence in my life. You will find that to be true in your own life. Be careful about who you let into your friendship circles.
Success and Friends
Your friends will have a very important impact on your thought pattern, ambition and rate of progress. Associate with people who are positive and get rid of people who pull you down.
In your quest for success, you may from time to time have to make difficult decisions to stop associating with former friends. Do not hang out with people just to avoid them gossiping about you, talking behind your back, calling you a “snob”. Understand that to soar like an eagle you have to avoid the company of chicken.
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hello Mr Dan,like it says,that two cannot walk together unless they agree.We cannot avoid to make friends.Like u rightly said,we choose them .Some bad ones play certain roles too in our lives.Nevertheless,I’ve learnt not to keep mediocres in my comfort zone..So what’s important to me is just to be relatable.Great work.
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Daniel,
this is the last article i read or rather recap on:-) tell me how would you classify a person who during party time she has a different sort of pals she spends time with and when doing other things like church again a different bunch, CSR different bunch. what do u make of such a person. she has true friends who are mainly male…..who she talks too, shares with…these male pals are people who educated, people who are well interacted in all ways that are good. but she has not best friend in terms of every day hanging out with….talk to me
cheers! the above is not fictional…true story
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nice work men
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HI DANNY’
Thanx so much for your inspiration. It enlightens so much especially for us youths. Thanx for reminding us the many principles of life that we seem to forget many times in our day to day life.
Cheers man’
Good work.
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your website is so inspiring.i agree with u about keeping off a bad company.as the bible says,bad company ruins good morals.
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theres a anothe rmwangi? lol! now, i dont mean to say im a genius but some of you are misunderstanding the point of this article, he didnt say distance yourself, he just said watch who you let into your space, if you are around negativity, it starts to rub off on you, same thing with positivity……if any of you went to school in upcountry, then you all know that principals would just assume all students from towns especially Nairobi were unruly(my school was like that), that they didnt like to study, that they were destined for expulsions! that didnt mean you had to dissociate yourself from friends hailing from Nairobi, it just meant that you had to choose who you’d hang out with, and ensure that you didnt cross paths with the adminstration coz they would be biased!
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Accept your destiny slimjess. LOL
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Hi
what if you whatever you do you still end up with thuggish friends, what do you do then ? It might be you were meant to be a thug but you deny you destiny ama am just lost doomed 4 life?
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ithink you have great mind boy. i wish i had friends like you .dickson (ku)
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hi daniel
From what i read , it seems that the concept of gaining ground through choosing friend to be linked particular to almost a certain people. You mention shifting allegiance and not carrying the entire communities burdens.This is not entirely the reason for the post as i read on.
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Hey dude!
That’s one inspiring article and also a reflective point of view.Thanxs for the information and keep up the Kenyan Spirit.
Later
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When it comes to making friends and deciding who should be allowed into your friendship circles, it is very tricky. I agree with most of what you have written but then again I remember that you need everyone to succeed. Even those that pull you down. You can never smoothen wood without an abrasive. I guess as you choose your pals, just learn the role the person plays in your life. The optimists will help you see the positive in life and the pessimists show you the negative, it’s your role to decide which will determine your decisions and actions.
I have watched many communities come together and succeed as one but honestly I’m yet to meet a group of Kenyans in any country that work as a people with the goodness of each other at heart. I understand when Kenyans in teh diaspora go as far as adapting different accents and learning other languages like the creole from West Africa just to mask their Kenyanness. I guess we should look deeper and see what the Kenyan problem is.
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Hey everyone,
Thanks for your post Daniel , good to have such ideas. Its true what you have said about friends , its important to know which friendships contribute to bettering ourselves.
From what i read , it seems that the concept of gaining ground through choosing friend to be linked particular to almost a certain people. You mention shifting allegiance and not carrying the entire communities burdens.This is not entirely the reason for the post as i read on.
Mwangi mentions a issue am passionate about , the community. I have observed over the years that success to a lot of immigrants is defined through association of a another group of people. This is expected for many reasons ranging from economic , social, and political.
Humans by nature are prejudice and people will seek to compare themselves to others to be able to almost define there elevation. the situation has lead to a very interesting scenarios.Over the years i have seen immigrants define themselves according there back grounds, north or south localities, keycards and steelcaps
In our search for success and choosing friends, lets not forgot that the success of others and the community. maybe instead of rejecting friends ,maybe we can try and help them to as much as the can be helped. we cannot choose who reads this blog ….but we hope it encourages everyone.
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I like your positive thoughts Daniel, I start applying it in reality and the life tunnel will seem brighter. Thank you
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Saw you material on facebook, clicked on it by mistake turned out to be a good mistake. Forwarded to all my friends in the office, they are liking it.
Keep up the good work.
Juz incase you have friends who want to invest in unit trusts hola.The market for fixed income instruments is quite good and you only need a minimum of Ksh.100,000.00. The returns are higher than savings accounts and withdrawals can be done at any time.
| Finance Department | British-American Asset Managers Ltd. (BAAM)
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Question….what attracts us to somebody from the very first moment? Think about that, there are many, many different emotions that attract us to want to get to know somebody better. So if there are friends out there that you now consider you should ‘drop’ ask yourself what attracted you to them in the first place. What changed, what went wrong, was it them, or you?
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@ Mwangi- If your boat is sinking, do you hold on to your luggage to save it all, or do you lighten yourself of the luggage you don’t need most so you make it the shore?
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@ Mwangi – You wrote “Now, I have a couple of problems with this:
1) You have to reject people: This idea of rejecting people and selecting something over people has always been a bit of a problem to me” – What if some people are a pain? You would treat them just as any other pain unless you are a glutton for punishment lol. Right? Do not feel bad about rejecting people if they plan or execute your downfall. By the way I love your 49 songs.
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Some friends are there for a reason, some for a season.
In my life’s experience, I have realised not all will like you, not all will be happy for you (even they ones you think they must),not all want you to succeed.
But thats life,
What I have learnt is to accept that,be in peace with all people from your side (Regardless, there is not excuse blocking your path because of grudges). You cannot control what others do or say or think but surely you can control thy ownself.
And should you part ways, leave your heart light, wish them well and go on with your life!
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@ Paula – Thank you for your comment once again. Letting go is not easy, but sometimes necessary. Maybe to avoid the pain of letting go, we should just be more conscious of friends we attract to our lives in the first place. Friends can make or break you, with or without you being aware. Sometimes the impact of some friendships will not be felt for years.
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@ Mwangi – Thank you for dropping by again and the heavy comment. You have articulated something that many of us migrants do but never realize it is a sophisticated skill. You really have to be good at classifying people especially in a foreign country to be able to fit, enjoy and avoid unrealistic expectations that may lead to disappointments.
Mwangi I know you are big on African Migrants, sticking together, seeing the best in each other and building each other up. That is what attracted me to your blog in the first place. However, when it comes to success, it is not always a collective thing especially here in the west. You cannot afford to carry the burden of an entire group of migrants regardless of how big your heart is. There comes a time where you have to shift your allegiance in the pursuit for happiness.
I do not advocate rejecting people for the sake of rejecting people. But some people might really be putting you down and slowing your success journey. You can reclassify those people, maybe talk to them less often.
Success is best enjoyed with people as you say, but we need to be more conscious of the kind of people we let into our space. You may not have the natural deep connection with interest based friends, but they sure would do much good to your success than a comfort zone friend who pulls you down with negativity.
Having said that, I love my Kenyan friends here in Perth and they form the majority of my friends. The truly deep Kenyan friends that I have would still be my friends even if they were German or Brazilian. It is the content of their character that matter not their country of origin.
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@ Carol – I will remember this “it’s the magnitude of friendships that counts not the multititudes of fickle friendhsips”. Thank you for your support and ideas, I am putting them into practice.
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@ Elly – Thank you for dropping by, I hope you can pick the right side of the stick and be on your way to success. Check back often, will be updating the site almost daily.
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@ James Court – Thank you for your kind message. You are right, it is the small things that we take for granted that can hinder progress.
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Isn’t this awesome right here.. I have had to let go off friends who add nothing to my life but try to pull me down every time I make a step forward. It is never easy to let go but if you want to succeed like Dan said you need to do that.
Amos 3:3 says that two cannot walk together unless they agree… and that is very true.. Life is about sharing and the people you stay with determine what you become.. I have learnt to rub shoulders with people that have this anointing of success cz it rubs on me too!!!!
Daniel- talk about comfort zones, when we become too familiar with someone we tend to enter into this zone, even God… We should learn not to be overfamiliar……
Thank you.
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Hey Daniel,
My first content heavy comment: Yay.
An interesting thing I found that occurred as a result of coming here, particularly after getting rejected, is I developed naturally ( and I am definitely not alone on this one) a high level of sophistication when it comes to classing people and their relationship to you.
There are:
1) Strangers who you’ll probably never ever be friends with.
2) Acquaintances who are pretty much strangers in every way except when you sometimes meet and exchange pleasantries.
3) Acquaintances who will forever remain that.
4) Acquaintances who might become friends.
5) Deep deep friends who you feel you would die for.
6) Friends who you don’t spend much time with but would be there for them, and they for you, in a heartbeat when there are problems and on and on and on.
Ever since 2007 I’ve had a bit of a problem with this philosophy in self-help. If we were to fully embrace it then the conclusion is pretty clear: its almost always to distance yourself from the community of your country – in our case – and begin making friends and relating to people on the basis of interests.
Now, I have a couple of problems with this:
1) You have to reject people: This idea of rejecting people and selecting something over people has always been a bit of a problem to me as one of the expressions I often recite to myself is:
“Take everything away, the buildings, money, platitudes, marks of “civilization” and all we have is each other and how we are with each other”
Many a time people should be held in much higher esteem than some goals – after all its the old adage of what use is money if you have no one to spend it with and as you would know its darn near impossible to form the type of close connections you have with your countrymen with anyone else.
2) It goes against history as far as I know it: I just finished watching Gangs of New York and over my birthday was talking to some Chinese friends of mine.
If I were to summarize my understanding of immigrant history it goes a little something like this:
1) The first immigrants arrive and catch hell in some fashion.
2) These first immigrants begin to form organizations, habits, run industries, do things that will define the culture of future immigrants.
3) More immigrants come and they clump together into communities.
4) If the community is bright – think Greeks, Chinese, Indians, Jews – they clump together and all grow together eventually having their own corners of whatever countries they are living in e.g. Mexicans with manual labour, Greeks and Jews with whatever the heck it is that makes them so wealthy.
Now assuming that I am accurate in what I’ve described above, then fully breaking away from our communities might be a huuugge mistake, especially since the African one is in its early stages, because it denies us the chance to help define it for the better.
Perhaps keeping our focus on that might be a better way to go.
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I agree with u in as much as I admire people who have many friends,as my mama once told me it’s the magnitude of friendships that counts not the multititudes of fickle friendhsips…hey I hadn’t even realised there’s such a thing as comfort zone friendships….enlightening!
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iguess i should hang around you more.im one of those guys who believe in soring high like the eagle i was ment to be but keep picking the stick from the wrong end and applying wrong priciples.Thanks for remind me(us) of some elementary principles i had forgoten.keep up the good work
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Daniel. Thank you for the everyday inspiration. It is truly enriching and I am glad.. no.. honoured to the associated to you.
You have a knack of reinforcing and putting into perspective all those simple things that if left to their own devices would become hinderances in my personal growth.
Keep up the good work.
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