You need to start surrounding yourself with better people.

Thank you to this sponsor who keeps The Saturday Sprint free

2024 was crazy. Life got complicated. That meant my calendar got weird. But Motion brought all my calendars together, managed my tasks (and how to deal with them when I missed them) and kept me mostly on track. One program became my virtual assistant without the cost. Try it free here.

An old friend reached out last week after ten years.

I've had an interesting life. And that tends to bring some interesting friendships. And not all of them have been particularly healthy.

I hadn't thought much of this one friend over the last ten years. She was one of those friends who was for a season.?

And that season ended back in 2003.

But the friendship limped along through another decade of occasional calls and catch-ups until she disappeared from social media, and I didn't really care to go looking for her.

I could have sought her out, but I didn't want to.

So, was it nice to hear from her again after ten years?

Not particularly.

You see, she is quite a negative person. One of those people who starts a conversation with a complaint about something. And who doesn't really seem very interested in someone from her past until she's had a falling out with everyone else in her life. Or when she wants to boast about something.

In our short online conversation, I heard about five different dramas from her life and one piece of very good news. I never had a chance to tell her anything about my life.

I'm pretty sure my lack of interest in the conversation was obvious when I stopped replying.

I have learned that there is usually a good reason why long-lost friends stay long lost. So many of them are no longer relevant in our lives.

One thing friends don't like seeing in you is change.

Friends don't like it when things change.

What does change look like?

• You start dating someone, and it takes time away from them
• You change jobs and can't go out on weekends anymore
• You make a new friend who just moved into your building
• You start studying and can't just "drop in" anymore

And the big one... you start a business.

It doesn't make them bad friends. It just sometimes means that they aren't relevant to your new life. And that means that some people who were really important to you will drop off.

And it's completely natural in this era to have friendships that last for a reason, a season - and more rarely - a lifetime.

The friend I was referring to earlier was definitely a season. I can think of another friend of mine who is a classic "reason" friend. We share an ex-partner. It's how we met and we've stayed in touch loosely ever since.

Friends who don't follow along with your changes are still friends - it's just that the intensity of the friendship will shift. Your daily chats will shift to a monthly "how are you?" Your weekly wine night will shift to seeing each other at the supermarket once every six months.

It's 100% natural and it's 100% ok.

It's change.

I called out starting a business as one of the big changes that affect friendships because that's what happened to me. Along with a few too many interstate moves.

When I started a business, I didn't have to spare money to live a fancy life with my fancy friends. I had no energy to party on Saturday nights with my rowdy friends. And I didn't have the ability to skip a day of work to go lay on the beach with my student friends.

And something else happened.

Some people are just the wrong people to be around.

I struggled with this a bit at the start.

But I managed to cull a lot of friendships that were really bad for me.

The friend I mentioned earlier was so full of negativity and uninformed opinions that I just couldn't afford the energy to be around her. Running multiple businesses, working multiple contracts, and trying to study at the same time needs loads of motivation, and she is not someone who is motivated to be around.

The same goes for another friend who has a constant stream of drama in his life. Not a week goes by without some major (mostly self-caused) drama taking over his life. It's exhausting to have to hear about it all the time. And even though the dramas are real, after a while, it all becomes a little "boy cries wolf", and I switch off.

And then there's the toxic friend who is so opposed to change in your life that they actively try to sabotage it. A few years ago, a now-former-friend would actively tell people not to work with me by slandering me so seriously that I had to threaten legal action.

Not every one of your friends will come on the journey with you - and it's probably best that you actively cut yourself off from some of them.

Author and motivational speaker Jim Rohn was famous for stating that "we become the average of the five people we spend the most time around."

And think about it... Don't you find yourself gossiping more around your gossipy friends? Or negative around your negative friend? Or are you more aggressive around your aggressive friend?

It makes sense that you'll reflect your lazy, unmotivated, angry or complaining friends eventually, too.

But won't you end up alone?

One thing I've learned over my lifetime is that friends come and go multiple times throughout our lives.

And if we're open to it, they'll keep coming into our lives right until the end.

The reality is that, despite Paul McCartney's brilliant song, the Eleanor Rigby's of the world are the exception. We are social creatures who are mostly wired to connect with others.

And while there are people around us who we tolerate for career, family or other obligation-based reasons, friends are the one lot of people that we can actually choose to disconnect from at any time.

Just choose your friends carefully.

Because if you end up being the average of the five people you spend the most time with, ?you should probably be a lot more picky about who those five people are.

That's all for this weekend. Just one short read about how friends come and go - and that's perfectly natural.

If you're not getting value out of these tips, please consider unsubscribing.

I won't mind and there are no hard feelings.

And if you are enjoying this newsletter, the best compliment you could pay me would be to share it with one person who you think would benefit from it.

See you again next week.

Cheers, Dante

P.S. Here are a few ways I can lend a hand if you need some help.

LinkedIn Local - Darwin returns on January 25 just before the long weekend. So join us for a drink and nibbles along with our panel of guests on the topic of Connection in the Age of AI. Book your place here.

If you're not in Darwin, but want to learn more about LinkedIn, join my free webinar on January 25 during the day for a quick 30-minute overview of how to make LinkedIn work for you in 2024. Book your place here.

I recently took a deep dive into the Mere Exposure Effect in the context of marketing a business. It's a bit of a read, but it's pretty insightful and can get you clear on why your brand is absolutely paramount. Read it here.