How Friends Shape Your Potential

If I can help you understand how your friends shape your potential, I’ll consider this a job well done. If I can empower you to spend more time with the people who matter — and brave letting go of the ones who don’t — to put your best foot forward that’s what’s up. That’s why I wrote this.

Now! On with the show…

Seeing Beyond What’s Visible (1/4)

As Millennials bridge the gap between having potential and actualizing it, they will get to know untapped sides of themselves. To actualize their potential is to see the manifestation of quiet dreams that, for many, lay dormant beneath the surface. The more quiet the dream, the more vulnerable its actualization.

For ambitious Millennials who don’t feel solid in their dreams, the vulnerability can be crippling.

For example: it’s easy for me to say I want big things for myself professionally. I’ve had enough early success and external validation that I trust I can toodle into life coaching and be just fine. More than fine. What that looks like or how it happens is a mystery to both of us, but I know my career will be big. That’s a dream, but it’s also a pretty comfortable one.

I’d like to think we all have something we feel that good about. Not taken for granted — just comfortable. For some of you, it’s making money. For others, it’s always feeling comfortable in your skin. Some of you know you’ll find love. Some of you are super chill and trust all sorts of things (these are our Jennys, from Too Much Oyster). And most of us have quiet dreams too.

For me, a quiet dream is to build a life with someone. It’s not surprising for a single twenty-six year old to say she wants to fall in love, but for me, casting that sentence out into the world feels sizably more daunting, because this:

My dream of running off into the sunset with some endearingly quirky goof is more vulnerable to share because at the time of this writing, it more closely reflects the image on the right than the left. I hold both shared dreams equally large, but one has more to show for itself than the other. I offer my own dreams as examples because for many ambitious Millennials, finding professional fulfillment can feel more like the image on the right than the one on the left. Owning a dream can be scary when you don’t have much to show for yourself.

We all need to surround ourselves with people who believe in our possibilities. For Millennials who aren’t on a path they want to pursue, it’s imperative they surround themselves with the special few who see beyond what’s visible. For our ambitious Millennial protagonist Tim, those special few will play an integral role in his journey to professional fulfillment.

Dreams Need to Feel Safe To Come Out (2/4)

In any growth spurt, Tim needs to feel like it’s safe to come out. A young dream is a like a seedling, and it’s squishable. Which brings us to the meat of this post: relationships! And squishability.

Tim’s relationships, like yours, are varying degrees of safe. Some people will make Tim feel deeply accepted as a human. Some will not. His relationships range from very safe to very not safe at all:

Most of Tim’s relationships will fall somewhere in that middle zone. Not good, not bad, just meh. We’re going to explore the most common relationships at each extreme to see what safe and dangerous relationships look like in the wild, so viewers at home can relate!

First up to bat: Tim’s SUPER Unsafe Relationships! If we wanted to borrow from a pretty professionally fulfilled ambitious Millennial, which, btw, we’re doing, we could turn to T-Swizzle. Tim’s SUPER Really Not Safe Relationships are like Selena’s gang in the Bad Blood video. They actively sabotage Tim’s career. We’ll call them Team Bad Blood, but in practice, it’s a *bit* less extreme. Villains don’t wear leather catsuits. They’re lycra, ok?! In all seriousness, while Tim has developed enough self-respect to steer clear of people who overtly attack him, he’s still susceptible to two sneaky power-trip relationships that don’t seem as bad as they are. Let’s meet them!

The Princess

You definitely know this person.

Tim likes the idea of this being a friendship, but this is not a friendship. The major problem here is that Tim thinks he has to be someone else to win The Princess’s approval. When we look at how this touches his career, he has someone who isn’t giving him room to explore. Tim will limit his idea of what’s possible to avoid backlash from The Princess. He wants to party in the palace too! Because remember: Tim at this point is a vulnerable little seedling, and The Princess can be a Grade A douche, so it’s pretty natural for him to want to protect himself.

• A similar but slightly different relationship is the Carryover Friend who kind of treats Tim like shit. Carryover Friend was tight with Tim 1.0, whose self worth wasn’t quite there yet. Tim has evolved as a human. He respects himself more now, and he demands more of those around him. But Tim 1.0 transferred friends with him to Tim 2.0 and Tim 3.0 with each device upgrade because yeah, he did backup, thank you. And now he’s Tim 4.0’s problem. This person usually isn’t bad news for Tim’s career, per se, but they’re also definitely not someone to explore dreams with, because they think they’re working with an outdated model and are going to offer options that are…… limited.

The Chris Brown

As we enter hot water, allow me to lead with: I am not an expert on abusive relationships, nor do I pretend to be. Nor do I feel any version of comfortable drawing this one. Like the Princess, the Chris Brown probably started in a great place. But at some point in time, the relationship soured, and Tim felt like he had to be a certain version of himself to win the Chris Brown’s approval. The point is: there definitely isn’t room to be himself here, and the repercussions are more serious than a rejection of his being.

The Critic

The Critic is more active with their attack. The critic doesn’t fall into power trip camp with The Princess and The Chris Brown, but the Critic brings a close-minded outlook to the world that can feel stifling. He’s never quite sure how they’ll respond, so he spends more time preparing for battle than just doing the thing he wants to do. Not the best person to explore dreams with.

They might have a perfectionist streak. They might be a strong J Myers-Briggs type. They almost definitely have their own shit to work out. It doesn’t really matter why The Critic is the way The Critic is, what matters is that Tim get out of firing range.

The overarching tone of these dangerous relationships is that love is withheld and given selectively. Any relationship that makes Tim feel like he has to conform himself or be different than he is to win their approval is not a safe place for him to explore his dreams. Tim is perfect as-is. Anyone who can’t see that can take a hike.

As we move along the spectrum, we pass our unsafe, average, and safe relationships. Before we meet the wonderful humans at the right end of the spectrum, let’s pause to say hi to a character who stands in a league of her own, somewhere between “SEND HELP” and “Means Well, But, No”.

The Mildly Anxious Friend

These nervous nellies walk through life with a fairly constant low-grade anxiety, ready to direct at anything that trips their invisible HEYLETSFREAKTHEFUCKOUT mousetraps. Tim’s career being no exception.

They see themselves as a pragmatic and vigilant warriors, defending Tim from the troubles of the world. Tim sees them as smothering. Unsurprisingly, these people are often parents. It comes from a good place, and while it’s actually pretty cool to have someone who gives so many shits about him!, if he wants to grow, he’ll have to remove the bubble wrap.

Pulling back from relationships is easier typed than done. These words are observations. Relationships are people. They’re real people with real histories and real insecurities and real dreams and real desires, just like Tim. But the hard truth is, he can’t build a strong career on a bedrock of toxins. It can be scary and uncomfortable and generally un-fun to pull back from people who’ve been a big part of his life. So here’s why it’s worthwhile: releasing unsafe relationships creates space for the supportive ones that let him grow.

Slightly right of center, we have some good eggs well worth mentioning: Tim’s Fan Club. While these people might not touch his career directly, they’re the ones who make him want to play the game. Most of his best friends land here. Tim’s Fan Club loves him no matter what because to them, he’s perfect as-is. If you think about the Fan Club metaphor literally, you appreciate their significance: playing to a packed house is one of the best feelings anyone can ask for. Tim’s Fan Club will be there with champagne when times are good and tequila when they’re not. Win or lose, they still booze.

Tim’s Fan Club matters. A lot.

At last!!! The rare birds who are going to kick Tim’s career into the stratosphere. These are the rockstars who take Tim to heights he couldn’t reach on his own. They make Tim feel cherished, championed, capable, and cared for. When Tim’s with his team, anything’s possible. Let’s meet them!

The Investor

One of my favorites.

The Investor puts her money where her mouth is. This friend doesn’t just say Tim’s great — her actions are a show of faith in Tim’s potential. She sets Tim up with prospects, throws money at his startup, vouches for him at his dream company, lets him life coach her when he has no idea what he’s doing, and gets him his first paying client. That’s an investor.

The Mentor (2/6)

This is one of few relationships where an uneven power balance doesn’t discredit the relationship’s beauty, significance, or impact.

The Mentor relationship is the established rockstar who sees something special in Tim. It means more, because the Mentor are already did the special thing. The obvious benefit of the Mentor is that they open doors Tim otherwise would not have access to. The slightly less obvious benefit is that a good mentor relationship can feel poetic, as the teacher/student dynamic lends itself to rich conversations about shit that matters. And that’s important: the Mentor’s perspective helps Tim see his seedling status as a step to something much bigger.

• An important anecdote is that The Mentor is one of many relationships that can feel a bit charmed, since it’s spared the strain that comes with codependency, competition, or comparison. For charmed relationships, seeing the good stuff is easy. It’s important to have these: people who see Tim’s beauty help him see it too.

The Coach (3/6)

Meet the friend who feels A-OK kicking him in the ass!

The Coach is growth-oriented like the Mentor, but the power dynamic is balanced. The Coach’s vantage point is closer to the battlefield, so she sees more of his nonsense. And this is good: the Coach can call Tim out on said nonsense. And this is good, because it’s never threatening — the Coach wants Tim to be super fucking fulfilled, so she holds his happiness to a standard they both know he deserves, and she’ll help him identify action steps to get there. It’s an active-collaborative friend with a team mentality. The Coach would be great at improv’s, “Yes! And…”

The Oblivious Inspiration (4/6)

This Oblivious Inspiration’s very existence sets the bar higher.

The hallmark sign of an Oblivious Inspiration is a healthy dose of irreverence, born of either childish naivete or a string of cognizant choices to give minimal fucks about fear. The Oblivious Inspiration’s life is creative and different and it challenges the way Tim thinks. Tim looks at the Oblivious Inspiration and thinks, “well, shit… why not me?!” This oblivious wunderkind might know that their life inspires Tim to want more for himself, although they’re typically too preoccupied doing their thing to give too many shits about what anyone thinks. The biggest benefit to having this friend in Tim’s life is they have a radically different concept of what’s possible than most people. Vis-a-vis the Oblivious Inspiration, the sky truly is the limit. But like. Something more far-reaching than the sky. Everyone reaches for the sky. How about: vis-a-vis the Oblivious Inspiration, the Deep Sea is the limit. Like, you know?!

• A similar but different relationship is the VERY Oblivious Inspiration. As in…………….Tim stalks the bejeesus out of them and they have absolutely no idea he’s doing it. He knows them, but they don’t realize how well he knows them. It may have been eight years since they met, that one time, at that party, so the stalkerdome’s a little weird but this is a person who — like the Oblivious Inspiration — is doing cool things and Tim likes to keep up. It’s a little strange, but it serves a good purpose, so we’ll let it slide.

The Yes (Wo)Man (5/6)

A personality that draws from many walks is The Yes (Wo)Man. The Yes Person is part ideas, part unfuckwithable faith in Tim as a human. The Yes (Wo)Man says yes to things – but they also have a track record of success, so it’s legit. They believe Tim’s more capable than he knows — and they’re living proof that he should take their opinion seriously. The difference between a Yes Person and Tim’s mother is said credibility.

I have literally zero interest in drawing this so we’re just going to move on to our sixth and final member of Team Tim.

The Soulmate (6/6)

Some people just get you.

That’s the Soulmate. The Soulmate relationship is not defined by romantic compatibility (although if they have that, good for Tim!), but by mutual understanding and a shared sense of purpose. There’s a click here, as their perspectives on the world are eerily similar. A high surface-level compatibility will really propel this into outer space, but it’s the deep stuff that makes it special. The Soulmate can be:

• A best friend
• A colleague
• A professor
• A family member
• That random stranger you met on a bus to Chicago and shared a beautiful four hours with
• The punny Aussie trainer whose existence validates literally everything you’re about**
• Noah Calhoun

These are the people who, without much effort, can get into Tim’s weird, strange, beautiful inner world. The defining characteristic of this relationship is openness, with a sprinkle of challenge. Tim’s guards naturally fade away in the presence of a Soulmate relationship. They see into each other, in a way.

The HUGE benefit of the Soulmate relationship is that they see in deeper than almost everyone else. When we look at Tim’s beautiful inner world, the Soulmate’s getting way in there – AND their very existence validates what they see. This is the ultimate safe relationship.

Another benefit to the Soulmate relationship is that their “similar, but slightly different!” worldview often presents Tim gifts he didn’t know he needed.

**In all seriousness: if you are in LA (specifically, West Hollywood) and think intense workouts and a hilariously laugh-y time are not mutually exclusive things, I cannot recommend Training Mate highly enough. I am actually sad as I type this, knowing it cannot be my gym. This might be the single saddest part about living in the Midwest. FUCK. They just understand me and they’re hilarious and I had a great time and I’m sad our relationship had to be so short-lived ok?! God I’m so sad. I wish I was kidding. I mean that as a literal call to God. Please let Training Mate see explosive growth that makes it a franchise that sends this gym here to me, where it belongs. This is getting embarrassing. I realize I’m bringing a BuzzFeed level of drama to what seems like not a big deal but I need you to know I’m being completely serious. ← that’s the soulmate relationship.

Ok, so to recap what we’ve learned:

1. Dreams are vulnerable AF. Especially when they’re quiet.
2. People can squish things that are vulnerable. Or they can nurture them.

I’ll offer another personal example to show how this looks IRL: when I was first entertaining ideas of becoming a life coach, I asked a close friend for (unnecessary) financial advice on how to fund my not-inexpensive training. It was a sheepish way to initiate an important conversation. The first words out of his mouth were, verbatim, “ARE YOU CRAZY?!” in a tone so cutting it lingers with me to this day. To recap what we’ve learned: this was unsafe.

Luckily, the overwhelming majority of my conversations went more like this:

• Me: I’m thinking of becoming a life coach.
• Friend: OMG!!! That makes so much sense. You’d be great!

Those were safe. The safe ones felt good, and I got more comfortable with the idea. The unsafe one felt fucking miserable, and we’ll return to that later. Bringing it back to Tim, whether he’s figuring out what he wants or is in the early stages of chasing a dream, he needs to share his dreams with the people who will hold him safe.

Dreams Need Energy to Grow (3/4)

Imagine Tim’s mind is an emotional energy bank.

Everything he does costs emotional energy. Like money, more is generally better, but it’s pretty worthless if it collects dust in a bank. He can use his emotional energy to accomplish great things. Or he can use it to be a pleasant human.

Building a kickass career takes emotional energy. Exploring dreams does too. If professional fulfillment is a thing that matters to Tim, he will need emotional energy.

To create enough emotional energy to be fulfilled or seek fulfillment, it’s important to understand how the bank works. Here are the basics:

Emotional Energy Bank Rules:

• The bank has a limited storage capacity
• Everything Tim does adds or detracts from his balance. Most things detract.
• The bank’s storage capacity works like a muscle: the more he uses it, the more he has.
• Like a muscle, if he withdraws too much, he won’t have anything left in the tank for life’s emergencies.

Like money, life has operating costs. Some are proactive: taking out the trash, paying taxes, putting a roof over his head. Others are reactive: navigating inclement weather, handling a crisis at work, repairing damages after calling his girlfriend’s cooking “interesting.”

Everything that isn’t spent existing is his emotional fun money. Dreaming, traveling, learning a new skill, being happy, building a cool career, writing insightful (but hopefully also funny?!) blog posts to help people love and accept themselves, making a new friend… all of that lives here. The more fun money he has, the richer life is. Metaphorically. But probably literally as well.

To get more fun money, he can do one of two things**:

1. Increase his storage capacity.
2. Lower his operating costs.

Both means to an end. But it feels silly to spend emotional energy on things he doesn’t need, so Tim’s going to start with a purge. Automating any and everything (read: The 4-Hour Workweek) and decluttering his physical environment (read: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up) are two great places to start. Doing a clean sweep of his relationships is another.

Some people are emotionally depleting. When Tim spends a significant portion of his emotional energy reacting to emotionally depleting people, he has less fun money left over to proactively do the things he wants to do. Again: to dream or live his dreams, Tim needs emotional fun money.

Whatever Tim aspires to be, working with his environment will be key to his success. When you read things like, “surround yourself with the people already doing the things you want to be doing”, that’s what this means. Adopting healthy habits, taking over the world, being a kind human, sexy socialite, whatever. The relationships in Tim’s life make the difference between surviving and thriving. The ones on a similar path give him energy. The ones headed a different direction taketh away.

This would be a good time to mention: I spent an exhaustive amount of time mapping out the different types of relationships we have in the Willpower arena and how they relate to our professional success. Here’s a much simpler way of looking at it:

You can see how this builds. The more dangerous someone is, the more emotional energy Tim has to spend either (a) not engaging in their shit or (b) protecting himself emotionally or (c) repairing damages. Safe people don’t tax his emotional fun money. SUPER safe people give him more! Which ultimately means: he’s going to go further and be happier, because he has more fun money to spend.

Which brings me to the asterisk from “here are the two ways we create more fun money”.

**It’s definitely easier to not deal with people who suck than it is to always be surrounded by people who energize you and to be having energizing conversations with said people. The rest of “adding emotional energy” is basically just sleep and the Herb Brooks speech.

Dreams Need Resilience to Grow (4/4)

The first two sections were about how other people impact Tim’s growth. This section is about how Tim’s response to those people impacts his growth.

Some people are going to make Tim feel like it’s not safe to come out. And some people are going to deplete him emotionally. Comes with the territory of getting to exist here, on the lovely Planet E. This final section is about how Tim responds to those people.

We talked about how safe, energizing people give Tim the emotional strength he needs to grow up. Interestingly, the unsafe, emotionally taxing people can be a major source of power, if he learns to turn strain into strength.

Let’s start by taking a look at what strain is.

Tim hurts when his roots aren’t deep enough.

In the personal example I shared, my feelings got hurt because they mirrored something I believed to be true. To me, the exchange felt like this:

• What the close friend actually said: ARE YOU CRAZY?!
• What it sounded like: This work is not important. Not only is it not important, but it certainly isn’t worth the amount of money you want to spend on it. This is not a valid life choice. And hey p.s.! Who you are as a human is unacceptable.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that is not what they were going for. As someone who can be quite… candid… it sucks to realize I can pretty much guarantee I’ve had the same effect on someone else. But here’s the real point of this story: his words hurt because I hadn’t accepted myself. My roots weren’t deep enough yet.

Not one to pass at the opportunity for a good Costanza reference, Tim needs to be embracing, “it’s not you, it’s me.” Because… it is. Let’s go back to his encounter with the pink-haired lady from the Willpower section.

The recipient shapes the reaction. My reaction mirrored my beliefs about myself. If I had accepted myself, it would have rolled off my back. If I was really in a place of inner peace, I’d get curious about why he asked. (For those wondering: this was almost definitely a Mildly Anxious Friend. It came from fear, not someone deep rejection of who I am as a human.)

In the same vein, George Costanza would react differently than the Rock would than Gandhi would. Because it’s not about being bald: it’s about how these men feel about being bald. George will see it as validation of his well-documented neuroticism. To him, “bald” might mean “hey p.s. you’re not sexually appealing, ipso facto you are worthless, as a human k bye”. The Rock literally will not care. Gandhi will see it for what it really is, which is some an indication of a battle going on within the pink haired lady. It all comes back to roots.

When Tim’s dreaming, he’s not an oak — he’s an orchid.

Cultivating Resilience

We’re all a little orchid-y, in one way or another. When we do things that are both (a) uncomfortable and (b) personally meaningful, we’re orchids. Let’s look at how this impacts Tim’s career.

When he ventures out socially, opens up to love after a bad breakup, moves to a new place, takes an unfamiliar role at work, meets his sig-O’s family, shares art, or floats the idea of moving to Bali to make tropical shirts for a living, shit is on the line, and he’s a bruisable little orchid. It might turn out great! But it’s new, and life’s life, so at some point he’s going to get punched when his guard’s down.

Someone will reject Tim’s friendship, someone will make him feel like an undateable loser. Like an Instagram that gets no love, he’ll feel like a total weirdo when he shares his art with the world and hears crickets when he hoped for applause. His new colleagues will make Tim feel stupid for botching the presentation. His girlfriend’s parents make him feel like where he comes from isn’t enough. And someone’s going to make Tim feel like his dreams aren’t valid or worthy of pursuing.

Now Tim’s a scrappy dude, so his natural response to the above shittiness is to spring back up, boxing gloves on and ready for the next one. His definition of grit means getting back on his feet. STAT.

Every time Tim gets punched, he has three choices.

1. Grow down
2. Grow up
3. Give up

He can spring back up as many times as he wants, but he won’t get taller that way. It’s all growth above the surface. He gets hit, he falls down, he grows up, repeat. When he gives his energy to this “rebounding strong” cycle, eventually, he’ll run out of steam. He’ll reach a point where he gets knocked down and he doesn’t have anything left to get back up. That’s giving up. He needs to grow down. And he needs a new definition of grit.

Like many other ambitious Millennials, Tim was raised to value resilience. He’s tenacious! When he gets knocked down, he gets up again. Just like Chumbawamba! Or a whackamole. But what started as a really rad quality turned into wasted effort when he forgot a step: the pause. The growing down.

Because here’s the thing: to grow up, he has to grow down.

Springing up without growing down does not a flower make. It’s important, so we’ll say it again: to grow up, Tim needs to grow down.

I recently connected with a friend whose response to a nasty breakup reminded me there’s an important message to share here: just because the world can’t see your flowers doesn’t mean they aren’t going to bloom. Growing down means putting your energy where the world can’t see it. It doesn’t look like much above the surface, but the ground below is teeming with activity. The friend will grow back her fallen branches, and she’ll grow up stronger, because her roots are ten feet deeper. Which brings us back to where we started this post: sometimes much of what we are can’t be seen.

Growing down is important. Emotion — and emotional depth — creates change. Growing down is working on ourselves. It’s what happens when we gets knocked down and let ourselves feel shitty. When Tim put himself out there socially, romantically, professionally and got hurt and leaned into those punches, he grew down. Growing down is wondering why something hurt to face discomfort with bravery. Growing down is how we turn strain into strength. Turning strain into strength is important — but that’s not the message today.

The message today is: don’t make life harder on yourself than it needs to be. Make great personal relationships a priority; life will provide ample opportunity for growing down.

In Conclusion…

The less energy we expend at war with our surroundings, the more energy we have to have fun and kick life’s metaphorical butt. To reach our highest potential professionally, we need to focus on our relationships.

Being at war with the people in our lives puts unnecessary barriers between us and fulfillment. And the further we go outside our comfort zones, the more we’ll need their support. Being supported by — and supporting — each other lifts us to our highest potential. Relationships and professional success are deeply, inextricably linked.

We’ve lost sight of our fundamental need for others. Pharrell has a beautiful quote on this that always stuck with me:

“It’s not all you. It can’t be all you. Just like you need air to fly a kite, it’s not the kite. It’s the air.”

Man I love that. The way I see it, the only way to make the most of our potential is to be loved. Just like Harry Potter. The people actualizing their potential are loved. Deeply and truly and irrevocably. To see your dreams actualized, you basically need an army of Lily Potters in your court.

To do what hasn’t been done, surround yourself with people already doing those things — and let them love you.

I challenge the notion that professional success comes at the expense of a rich personal life. The way I see it, if your career is important to you, your relationships need to be. Dreams are SUPER vulnerable when they’re young. We need to give them to people who will support their heads and hold them gently like the tender babies they are.

While it may be more comfortable to look at our careers in a vacuum, truthfully, they’re one piece of something much larger. We can want great things and dream big dreams, but they won’t go anywhere if we don’t have wind to lift us up.

Great relationships make the difference between thriving and surviving.

But this entire post is operating under a generous assumption: you have relationships. We haven’t touched on the absence of relationship, whose emptiness is as important as the space that is filled. To be lonely is to be a kite without wind.

Loneliness is a real challenge in the digital era, and it’s a massive problem plaguing entrepreneurs. I’ll write more about loneliness another day, because it’s a topic that matters deeply to me and I want to do it justice. In absence of rich analysis, I’ll leave you with simple wisdom, found in a dormitory hall sophomore year of college:

We’re all just trying to find each other.

The greatest irony of all is that you are never alone in loneliness. And so, my parting thoughts are simple: reach out, connect. Love. Dare to be seen as you are.

-Cady