Losing friends as you grow

Okay, let’s talk about friendships and business growth. This is something that has come up a little bit lately, both for me personally and inside. One of the trainings that I recently conducted, someone shared that as they are growing, they’ve lost a few of their friends. So in today’s episode, let’s dive into this topic. We’ll understand a bit more about why you might lose friends as you grow.

I’ve spoken a lot on this podcast about the discomfort of growth, but let’s talk about outgrowing friends, or maybe when friends distance themselves from you.

Has this happened to you in your business journey yet? Maybe it has or maybe it hasn’t yet. But if you are destined for being rich, which I’m guessing you at least have the desire for, if you are here listening to a money podcast, well, you are gonna grow. And as part of that journey, I hate to say it, but chances are this is something that you are going to experience.

Why we lose friends as we change

So why do we lose friends as we change? Well, there’s a couple of reasons why. Firstly is that as you are changing, you then have less in common than you used to with the people that you used to hang out with. Let me share an example. When I used to live in Sydney, I had this massive group of girlfriends, and we used to go out every weekend. Oh my gosh, we had some fun. There was 13 of us in the group at one stage. And then what would happen was that people would find partners, some of the girls would couple up. Now, it wasn’t that we weren’t friends with them anymore, but we were just sort of finding that we didn’t have as much in common because the friends that were coupled up didn’t wanna go out and hit the pubs on a Friday night. They wanted to stay at home with their, their new partner. So sometimes as we are changing, we have less in common with certain friends, and therefore we perhaps aren’t spending as much time with them.

The next reason that we can lose friends as we are changing is because of jealousy. As you are achieving amazing things, there are going to be people around you who are triggered by that. They want the things that you are creating in your life, and therefore, they feel uncomfortable when they’re around you or talking to you. And so their way of dealing with it is to distance themselves.

Getting out of alignment with other peoples values

Another thing that can happen as you’re experiencing personal growth is that there’s no longer an alignment in values. As you are changing, you might start to value different things. You might want to start to have different conversations. Some examples of this, as you are becoming more educated in worldly things, maybe you don’t find some of the jokes that people make funny anymore. You say, you know what, that’s actually really inappropriate. As you were starting to chase bigger dreams, maybe you don’t want to have gossipy petty conversations anymore. So what might start to happen is that there’s a bit of a disconnect in terms of your values, and therefore there might start to become distance or a wedge in the friendship.

Practically speaking, you may have different budgets to others

Another thing that can happen is that from a purely practical sense, you end up having different budgets to people. So I think back to when I was in uni, I was perfectly happy to drink wine out of a bag. Well, here in Australia, it’s called goon. I can’t even drink cheap bottled wine. I literally would rather not have any wine than drink something that’s not tasty for me. And you know, this is something that as I’m able to afford to drink nicer wine, I choose that I don’t want to drink cheaper wine anymore. Another example, when I was at university, I used to catch the bus everywhere, and I’m not opposed to public transport, but these days, if I go out for dinner and get to the end of the night, I don’t want to sit around and wait 45 minutes until the next bus comes home. I’ll just catch a taxi or an Uber. And so what can happen is that people might be on a different budget to you. You know when you’re going to pick somewhere to go out for dinner with some friends and you want to go eat somewhere nice, and they’re like, whoa, let’s just go down the local pizza shop. There might be a bit of a disconnect. And that’s a really, really practical thing. This doesn’t come from a, I’m better than you place, it’s just that you might not be in the same place as your old friends financially.

I can imagine that if one of my friends suddenly became a billionaire and suggested we hire out private jets everywhere that we wanted to go, I might have to point out that I can’t actually afford to pay half of a private jet at this point in time. It’s literally outside my budget. So my billionaire friend would either have to pay for me, or they might find people who do have a similar budget as them to go on that trip. The point I’m trying to make is that sometimes in life we are heading in different paths to people. So as you are growing, as you are creating more success, more wealth, why would people not want to be friends with you?

Why people may distance themselves from you (as you are growing)

So as you are growing, as you are creating more success in your business, as you are creating more wealth, more assets, as your lifestyle is evolving, why would people not want to spend as much time with you? Well, one of the reasons it probably makes ’em feel like crap makes you feel like crap when you’re hanging around with people who are doing bigger things than you in certain areas. And when there’s that disconnect, that discomfort, that gap there, some people will feel really inspired by it, really happy for you, and other people feel really, really triggered. And because of that feeling of feeling like crap, they just choose to distance themselves.

I know I’ve lost quite a few friends already along my own journey, and in almost every circumstance, it actually wasn’t me, the one who was creating the distance or not making the effort. I’ve had one friend who literally ghosted me. The last conversation we had, she had a massive rant at me about rich people and how people change when they have money. Now, she wasn’t specifically talking about me, she was talking about someone else, but I kind of was getting the undercurrent of what was going on. And since then, I’ve been trying to catch up with her on multiple occasions. And the last time I text and said, Hey, I’d really love to see you guys. When can we next catch up? She did not reply to me at all. I know the reason is that she follows me on social media and sees me talking about money and about wealth creation all the time. And clearly that’s a trigger for her.

Another reason why distance might be created in our old friendships as we are growing is that as we grow, we’re choosing to spend more time with certain people. I know that these days I don’t wanna sit around and bitch about the price of groceries, I’m sorry, that’s not how I want to spend my time and energy. I love to have conversations about travel, about investments, about business opportunities. So I’m naturally going to gravitate towards people who are interested in similar topics.

So what’s the point of this whole thing? The key thing that I wanted to highlight is it’s okay if we outgrew people or if people move away from us. I personally don’t want to lose any of my lifelong friends, but I recognise why people might get triggered by my way of life and the way that I’m showing up in the world and choose to want to distance themselves from me.

And another thing, I also acknowledge that I’m changing and I love the way I am changing. My confidence is growing. I’m going to clear on my boundaries and my goals, and I’m fearlessly chasing my dreams. I don’t care if my reels look cringe on Instagram, I care if I’m connecting with my dreamboat clients. I don’t care if I seem like a show off talking about my bestselling book, even on my private social media, which I have done. I shared that win over there. I’m really proud of it. Something I do want is to surround myself with positive people, and I want to surround myself with people who want the best for me, even if it’s not in alignment with what they want. I can celebrate wildly the success of my friends, even if it’s of no interest to me at all, like running a marathon or I’ve had a friend release their first singing album. I want the best for my friends, and I want to be around people who want the best for me and celebrate me and my goals and successes and lift me up not to be negative and jealous. People don’t have to get it. I mean, I don’t understand why anyone would want to run in a marathon, and run for several hours at a time, but I can recognise that it is a huge achievement and celebrate for them and be happy for them.

You become the people you surround yourself with so constantly look at that circle and check in that they are supporting you and they are your biggest cheerleaders. You deserve to be surrounded by love and positivity and support. Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode of the podcast. I hope you have a fab week and look forward to chatting to you soon.