Driven people love other driven people. Strong, successful people make each other stronger.
I’m not talking about the grades you get in school or your fitspiration goals, I’m talking about the way we empower each other as adults.
Any relationship — professional, romantic or friendship — should meet one standard — we should make each other happier, better people. If after you meet someone, you feel like a better version of you, keep them around.
Particularly, this relates to our careers and projects of passion.
What we do outside of work is what defines us, but reality is that we spend anywhere from forty to eighty hours a week working “day jobs.” We spend more time hustling than we do exercising, adventuring, partying, or doing “Netflix and chill.”
Until we get to the point where we don’t need to work anymore (if we ever get there), work is inevitably a part of our life. It’s important.
Well, my career is important to me at least.
It’s been almost a year and a half since I started my business. The transitional period was one of the hardest times in my life. My self esteem, financial circumstances, time obligations, my strength and my hope were a lot more unstable than my current country-hopping travel itinerary.
Optimism, sarcasm, and coffee binges weren’t the only things that kept me going.
I couldn’t have done it without my friends and family.
Seriously, no matter how hard I fight, it’s not something that gives me the strength to fight, it’s always someone.
As I’ve cut toxic friendships, meet new people, and consider future romantic relationships, I know that mutual support in careers and passion projects is non-negotiable.
How can we help each other achieve our goals?
We need successful people who remind and encourage us of what we can do because of who we are. That’s why we stick together:
- We feed off each other’s ideas.
- We teach each other new things.
- We understand that it takes a few late nights of working and not drinking to pop champagne — figuratively and literally.
- We make each other laugh when we are struggling.
- We check each other’s “I can’t help it” with an “it’s not helping you*.” – *my best friend.
- We don’t get jealous of other people’s success and actively celebrate each other’s accomplishments.
- We provide honest, constructive criticism.
- We are picky, so we find comfort in knowing that even when we don’t meet our own standards, we are still good enough for the successful people who love us anyway.
- We listen to each other vent.
- We offer help before they even ask.
- We don’t judge each other for our moments of weakness and our periods of failure.
- We know that when we give the hook up, we’re going to get the hook up.
- We say “you’re not failing, you’re just pivoting.”
- We believe in each other. And sometimes, that’s all we need — someone to believe in us so we don’t stop believing in ourselves.
But that’s not just it.
Looking at how far I’ve come, there is a defining factor much greater than encouragement that glues the doers, not just the dreamers, together:
15. We understand that while we may not be invincible, our opportunities are limitless.
There are people who say, “we can’t do that” and there are people who say “we can try.”
The latter tends to be successful. They’re also the ones I’m keeping around for #SquadGoals and true love.
I think it’s funny when people ask me how I intend to date if I like to travel often.
You think married people don’t travel? Doesn’t the President of the United States travel? Did Beckham and Victoria’s love stop being fabulous post baby-making?
Do you think Beyoncé wasn’t building her career and traveling around the world when Jay-Z went after her?*
Hell, if you think travel and true love don’t align, your goals aren’t big enough.
How can I date a man who doesn’t believe in an extraordinary lifestyle?
Sure, I like to keep some things old-fashioned and I find appreciation in the ordinary, but I’m also going to redefine a white-picket fence the way I reshaped my career. My world has no borders.
Limits start in your state of mind.
When I was a kid, my mom used to tell me “the only obstacle in your life is yourself,” and I believed her.
My mentality as a child was that if my mother could have me at sixteen, and my parents could overcome so many obstacles to be successful, then how much more could I overcome with all of the opportunities I had that they didn’t?
And while my mom isn’t wrong too often, she was wrong about that.
There are a lot of obstacles in life beyond our “self.” There are real, tangible limitations to what we can accomplish.
But there are no limitations to what we can try, what we can learn, and therefore, we can do more and be more.
We can brink our capacity in only one way: understanding how much we don’t know about our potential.
I didn’t think that at twenty five I’d be getting paid to stay at seven-star hotels, hike volcanoes and play jetplane laser tag (this is a real thing). I definitely didn’t anticipate to be flying my best friends and my parents to international destinations. I thought I’d be forty when I did these things.
Maybe fifty or sixty.
But I did think I’d get “here” eventually.
I didn’t know what “here” looked like, and I didn’t know what path would get me here, but I picture the type of lifestyle I want and try different things to achieve it.
We don’t really know what we are capable of, but by surrounding ourselves with other successful people, we can push each other to find out.
We’re not just discovering our potential, but actually further growing and developing it.
We can literally grow our abilities. How grand are the things we are able to do? Who knows!
That’s another thing about successful people: we do care, we do try. We may fail, but we aren’t ashamed of it.
To me, this is a part of living a life of passion.
So if you’re not on the power team, sure you can sit with us. We can hang out. I’ll be friends with anyone until they give me a reason not to be.
But the people I keep closer, we don’t sit for too long. We pull each other up because the top isn’t lonely when we climb together.
Pictured: Sunset in Umag, Istria, Croatia. Photo by Taylor Michael Burk… but it was my idea —-
Seeeee how great team work is haha
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