How To Choose Your Friends

This post on choosing your friends was originally written and published on 16/02/2008 on my old site, ‘The God Is You’, and may conflict with my current philosophy.

YOU’VE NO DOUBT heard the term, “Choose your friends wisely”. But do you actually do that? Where did you meet your current friends? Maybe it was at your place of work, a previous job, or even at school. Sometimes your best friendships can be the ones you’ve had the longest.

But ‘longest’ doesn’t always mean ‘best’ – not to be confused with another popular subject. Imagine the person you were at school. Remember what you wanted to be – your goals, dreams, desires. The music you liked, your hobbies and your ambitions all defined who you were.

Back In The Day

At school, I was always a drifter. I remember when I started playing guitar, at thirteen years old. I befriended – and started to hang around with a bunch of guys who also played the guitar and were into the same kind of music as me: rock. We all had the long hair and used to wear the black jeans and the token gothic T-shirts symbolising our hate for the world. And for a while, that was who I was.

Then I realised I’d had enough of that phase, and my identity changed. I stopped spending time with that group of friends and started spending more time with other friends. This happened a few times throughout school, college, early jobs and deep into my adult life – constantly changing identity and swapping-out friends to fit accordingly.

The point is, up until the time where you realise you can actually make your own decisions in life, your friendships are based more on proximity and practicality than compatibility and similarity of purpose and goals.

Time For An Identity Change?

Is it a good thing to change your identity? Yes it is, if you need to. When you realise who you are, where you are going in life, and how your identity is defined by it, you may be happy with that realisation, or not. You may realise that, actually, what you want in your life is completely different to what you first thought.

And when this happens, you’ll discern that the person you are – your identity – is not congruent with your goals. So you then have to change your self, and mould your character into the person that is going to ultimately achieve the goals you want in the pursual of your purpose.

It’s exciting stuff. I went through many identity changes until, at twenty-nine, I eventually discovered what I wanted to do with my life after opening many doors. That’s twenty-nine years old. Not sixteen. Thirteen years after choosing my A Level courses at college which, looking back now, are completely incongruent with my purpose.

Anyway, to get back to the point of this article, the person you are now may be vastly different from the person you were at school. The same goes for your school friends. So if you are still close friends with your school friends – and by ‘close’, I mean you spend time with each other every week – have you both really changed since school?

And maybe you both have changed, and you’ve followed the exact same path in life, toward the same ultimate goal. Or maybe you both haven’t changed, and you are both still on the same exact path that you were both on at school.

Either way, this is called coincidence, or influence. To explain, let’s use a fictitious example. At school, you were best friends with someone. One day, you decide you want to become a professional tennis player. It becomes your purpose in life. You practise and play at every opportunity you get.

And your best friend also makes that same decision, playing tennis with a view to becoming a professional. Now, did your friend also decide to become a professional tennis player – as influenced by you (which is fine if that’s what they really wanted to do)? Or was it just a coincidence that they started to play, too.

Either way, you both decided to become a professional tennis player, and hence your purpose is the same. Your friendship is compatible and beneficial to each of your purposes, since they are exactly the same.

Drifting Apart

But let’s say that after you decided to become a professional tennis player, at school, your friend realised that he wanted to be something different in life. One of two things can happen. You can go your separate ways, since the time you once used to spend together is now taken-up with the pursual of your respective purposes (likewise, the time you do spend together is strained, since it’s harder to relate to one another with your both now having different and incompatible goals.)

Or, you may still stay best friends. This may be a good thing or a bad thing. It really depends on how much time you spend together and how that time is spent. The question is, is it beneficial to your own purpose and life by keeping a friendship going just for the sake of longevity, if it is taking your energy away from your actual desired goals?

I have ultimately, unabashedly chosen my current friends based on the value they offer me and my purpose. They fit. That’s honouring them, since it confirms they have values that I hold high. I have had many friends fallen by the wayside – some that were close. To have stayed friends with them would have been lying to them and to myself. That would be disrespecting myself and my purpose in life. I don’t have time for that. Life’s too precious.

Choose Wisely

Take a look at your friends. Would you swap any of them out, if you could? Yes? So what’s stopping you? To stay friends with someone just because you’ve known each other for a long time is criminal. It’s fake. It’s lying to yourself, and it’s lying to your friend. It’s completely disrespecting your existence and purpose.

And that’s just not being a humanpreneur.

Time for a clearout, maybe..?

To freedom,

Scotty Stevens
The Humanpreneur
"mecum et incipio et finio"

Disclaimer: As per my Terms And Conditions, this post reflects my philosophy at the time of writing, and may not necessarily correlate with my life's outlook as you read it, now.

Attention Ezine Editors & Site Owners...
Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety in your ezine, blog or on your site as long as you do not modify the content AT ALL, leave all links in place AND include the resource box as listed above.

What Next? Well, You Can... - Leave a comment about this post (if enabled for this post) - Discuss this post in The Scotty Stevens Show FORUM - Help feed me by kindly making a donation - it's much appreciated! - (allows you to email, add or send this post) -   Click here for this article feed - Hire me for speaking or coaching - Go to the shop - Become a member (free)