I Lost All Of My Friends…

“Growing up” in my entrepreneurial ventures and learning lessons, looking back, I noticed how I lost majority of my friends. Well, I didn’t lose them literally, but as time went on less and less I hung out with them and even kept in touch with them. The main connection I had with them was through Facebook. And even then, I didn’t really converse with them. They were my childhood friends growing up and bonds that I made through high school.

In hindsight, I lost touch with them because majority our interests differed. When I was getting into business, that’s all I wanted to mettle in. I read books, watched videos of talks and seminars on success, business, investing, etc. and hustled while most of my friends were out partying at night and on the weekends. So, there was a disconnect between us and we naturally lost touch.

Some of my friends went off to serve in the military, labored in the construction industry, went forward my former passion of cooking and became chefs, and one of my good friends even became a successful self-employed plumber (Check him out at Plumber Honolulu). So, most of them became successful in their own services and interests which is great.

But what I wanted was to become a successful entrepreneur. In several books I came across the saying, “if you want to become successful in something, surround yourself with people who are already successful at that.” Or along the lines of, “you become who your surround yourself with“. It is kind of related with the metaphysical teachings of your thoughts become your reality, in a broad way.

Surrounding myself with like minded and successful people almost became natural as I meddled in business. I made new friends, hung around with mentors more, and if I didn’t have people to talk “business” with, I naturally found myself seeking more people to do so with. My wife became my “best friend” to talk business with (more on that later). It’s kind of ironic because having an introverted personality I naturally shied away from social connections. But, that’s the very thing my mentors taught me to do, so I pushed myself to do it.

As I made new friends, visualized my goals, and changed my mindset, my world began to change and led me closer to my goals. Much of everything and everyone else faded away. It’s not that I wanted it to happen that way, it just ended up that way.

Whenever I did reunite with my friends at social events, our conversations tended to be disconnected. We had different perspectives which led to different beliefs and disagreements. But, I understood the reasons why, so I just kept an open mind and went with the flow not bucking our conversation with disagreements that I had. I mean, they were still my friends and friends are much more than that.

In all I still had my friends, but for me and my experience, my journey in becoming a successful entrepreneur led me to lose touch with them. Something to keep in mind in your own entrepreneurial ventures – things will change.