Surrounding Myself With Great People

It’s hard for me to hang out with peo­ple with same bad habits as I have (or have had).

Habits like:

  • over­re­act­ing
  • wor­ry­ing
  • ana­lyz­ing or think­ing too much
  • being judg­men­tal
  • get­ting emo­tion­al­ly involved in arguments/discussions
  • putting val­ue in mate­r­i­al things
  • being impa­tient
  • get­ting too com­pet­i­tive

I always try to improve and refuse to accept these things in myself, so it’s hard for me to accept them in oth­ers. I’m also afraid that spend­ing too much time with them would make me com­pla­cent, as I’d start to believe that these things are accept­able because oth­er peo­ple are okay with it.

That’s why I sur­round myself with peo­ple who are bet­ter than me.

11 comments

  1. No one is bet­ter than you!

  2. Hmmm. over­re­act­ing or wor­ry­ing — I’d be as bad as you are no doubt; ana­lyz­ing or think­ing too much; def­i­nite­ly same;
    but the rest I could no doubt help with.

    But it does­n’t always mean you plus the same kind as you would be dis­as­ter. I was with a room­mate who had the same math anx­i­ety I had, and it forced us to actu­al­ly work our way out of it — because for once, no one more com­pe­tent than was around to bail us out. There was a real­ly fun­ny moment when we real­ized we had to break down a crazy bill into bundling per­cent­ages and we both looked at the oth­er one like, well?, raised eye­brows.… each expect­ing the oth­er to fig­ure it out. Both drew a blank, paused, took our pens back up and grap­pled it out.

    I think you’d see your own reflec­tion and deal. Of course it’s not com­fort­able.

    • Your sto­ry has made me real­ize that it’s not so much peo­ple who are bet­ter, but peo­ple who are will­ing to try to improve that makes the dif­fer­ence. Bad habits may not nec­es­sar­i­ly breed bad habits in oth­ers, but com­pla­cence breeds com­pla­cence.

  3. That’s the spir­it. Of course, there is a catch to that though. I do that right now and the side effect is, my con­stant bouts of melan­choly and depres­sion because no mat­ter how much I try, I can’t seem to achieve the same lev­el traits, skills or abil­i­ties that these peo­ple have.

    At the end of the day, what mat­ters isn’t what char­ac­ter traits those peo­ple have, but what do they mean to you. You can some­one who’s a reflec­tion in the mir­ror, but if they stand by you more than the “bet­ter” peo­ple, then what’s the point of hav­ing those “bet­ter” peo­ple around?

    It is in the pow­er of true friend­ship that peo­ple grow togeth­er. Learn to com­ple­ment each oth­er and in spite of one anoth­er. After all, if you’re look­ing at it from that per­spec­tive, what if those “bet­ter” peo­ple don’t want to hang out with you because you exhib­it traits that they don’t want to be asso­ci­at­ed with?

    It still boils down to hav­ing some­one you can trust to be your­self regard­less of who they are.

    • I have the same feel­ings as you, in terms of nev­er being able to achieve the same things as oth­ers, but I’ve also learned that you should­n’t com­pare your­self too much. The impor­tant thing is that you’re try­ing, not just giv­ing up, it still brings out the best in you. After all, some goals are nev­er meant to be achieved.

      You bring up a good point in your last sen­tence; it’s impor­tant to do these things for your­self, not some­one else.

  4. Is this why you nev­er call me to hang out?

    • So what are you guys doing on the 27th? I have yet to meet Bobby. Or Brent, for that mat­ter.

  5. (LOL Tiana)

    OK: Another COMPLETELY TRUE sto­ry: I used to fol­low a band with this woman who played flute in it. She was an earthy-type woman who seemed to live this idyl­lic float­ing exis­tance to me — veg­e­tar­i­an, acquaint­ed with every impor­tant musi­cian in town, did a lot of trav­el­ling with the band, even with her child in tow; with a sol­id good look­ing longterm awe­some-musi­cian boyfriend; amaz­ing clas­si­cal musi­cian­ship and jazz improviza­tion­al skills; and a pre-raphaelite paint­ing sort of phys­i­cal appear­ance. I was so in awe of her.

    Then one day she said to me, the groupie-fol­low­er: “Wow, you’re just so good at every­thing. You’re such a great dancer, you sing, you can play key­boards, you make these awe­some cos­tumes…”, and I then heard com­ing out of her mouth how every one of the things I thought were amaz­ing about her were pret­ty much on shaky ground to her. She did­n’t feel she was beau­ti­ful or tal­ent­ed at all, and in fact felt real­ly in a sense of flot­samish dis­tur­bance about the insta­bil­i­ty of her career, etc., and guilty that her par­ents were help­ing her sup­port her child, etc. etc., and I just sat there with my mouth open.

    EVERYONE feels this way in one way or anoth­er.

  6. I don’t know if we have plans. Brent’s at hock­ey so I’ll have to ask him tomor­row. What do you have in mind?

    We’re hav­ing a lunch/party here on the 21st for Bobby’s b‑day and you’re more than wel­come to come. Jay will be here too so there will be more than one per­son you know. And the dogs, you know them too.

    • Okay I’ll e‑mail you with details.

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