It’s Friendship Day People…so who are your friends again?

By Marita Greenidge

Can you do it? Can you really walk hand-in-hand with someone who’s not going where you want to go? At some point along the journey someone’s going to have to let go or both your journeys will come to a screeching halt.

Pretty simple concept…let’s make it even simpler. You are kind enough to give your friend a ride to the supermarket. You buy all your groceries and are ready to head back home. If both of you live at the same house then great, you return home together. If you don’t, you have to drop that friend off. If you decide you want to hang out with your friend a little more because you enjoy their company so much then you’re stuck at that friend’s house until you leave. Meanwhile your groceries are sitting in huge pile because you decided to linger and not go on to do your business. Your journey has halted and you haven’t reached your destination. The frozen food is getting warm and the hot food cold.

In life, who you surround yourself with has such a crazy impact on your life. It morphs your thinking because you become immersed in a way of life. If societal status and gathering ‘things’ are the ambitions of your friends, then you may slowly find that those become your ambitions as well. And we may not want to admit this but think about the way you speak…the words you use….those bits and pieces you pick up along the way. I never said the word “awesome” before I came to Rochester but now it’s ingrained in my vocabulary….a little gift from my classmates who said it so frequently. I’ve passed on “altrighty” to my roommate. You see how this works. These things solely creep up on us and we don’t realize until it’s ingrained.

You want great habits and ways of thinking to seep into you. You want peer pressure to have a useful purpose like encouraging you never to cheat on your spouse or to volunteer to tutor young kids or adults. You don’t want it telling you to buy the latest non-essential object as the only way to feel worthy.

You do this by surrounding yourself with the right kind of people, the ones who are going to the same place you are. It’s the reason in your career you’re encouraged to join associations related to your fields. You get all the good info on the recent developments in your industry and a group of people that can help if you get stuck in a problem.

It’s easy to see this applied to a career so why is it so difficult to apply to our lives?

Don’t Settle for Mediocrity….Be Extraordinary

“Along the way, we settle,” began Seth Godin’s post. And I thought about this, along the way sometimes we do settle. We settle in relationships and we settle in jobs. In relationships we just don’t want to be lonely….in jobs we just need to make some money.

The personal development books will tell you, you don’t have to settle and any motivational speaker worth his/her salt will tell you the same. But then you take a step back and look at your life and wonder “Gosh, how do they really expect me not to settle? These are just easy words; they don’t have to live my life.”

And you know what, that’s true…they don’t have to live your life. But I’m going to throw my hat in the ring and also say settling is bad. I’m a realist although if you met me you’d probably think I’m a naïve optimist :-). I want everything to be amazing but I recognize things aren’t always so simple for everyone in the world so giving up-in-the-air solutions is a sure-fire way for people to turn away….I’ve seen people lose their faith because they aren’t given practical solutions beyond “Trust in God”.

And I trust in God but sometimes when dealing with real issues you need a lot more than those words.

Let’s take a look at jobs. Sometimes you do have to settle for a job which isn’t ideal because without it you might not be able to repay student loans or support your family. However that job doesn’t have to be the end of the line; there may be skills you can glean that help you get to where you want to go. There may be connections you can make. Don’t look at the situation with a closed mind; view it as a stepping stone to getting you where you want to go.

Relationships are a little bit more tricky…it’s obviously completely unfair to be using someone as a stepping stone to someone else. But with these I’d have to recommend that settling is not an option. If you know what you want and what makes you happy then you deserve nothing less and anything less will make you unhappy. Of course you shouldn’t have a laundry list of things that need to be checked off…people are only human remember!! But I’m sure there are some key traits you don’t want to compromise on. So don’t…..and these key things are usually better as character traits instead of superficial qualities.

So what makes me qualified at just 26 years of age to be speaking such things? Let’s say I’ve been there and done that. Settling never makes you happy.