Friend Archives - Isucceedbook.com

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes

Don’t you hate it when someone lets you down…again?

Don’t you hate showing up on time on to be kept waiting…again?

Don’t you hate hearing someone say they’re sorry…again?

If you’re like me then you’ve probably be on the wrong side of these equations…again and again.

People who know me know I’m both patient and kind, to a fault on both accounts.

I can forgive people nearly anything because I like to believe that they have learned their lessons and will not make the same mistake twice.

But guess what? They do…and not just twice but three and four times.

Why is that?

Is it because they lied to our faces when they said, “It won’t happen again?” Or maybe it’s because they don’t know the effect their actions are having?

I think it’s neither.

While it’s not always true I have found that people tend to be who they are.

They are either good or bad, kind or mean, funny or serious.

Change is possible, but it’s not always easy. In fact, most of the time it’s downright difficult, if not almost impossible.

So if you’re one of the unlucky people who gets the short end of the stick time and time again, what should you do?

I think the best thing you can do is understand just who you are dealing with.

If your friend is always late, tell them the appointment is 30 minutes earlier than it actually is.
If your coworker keeps letting you down, ask someone else to get the job done.
If your teammate continually breaks their promise, stop asking them for help or have a back-up plan so that you’re not caught with your pants down.

What I’ve found from personal experience and trying out many techniques I’ve read about in books is that the best thing you can do is limit your exposure to such people.

Or as my homestay mother used to say when hearing my girlfriend woes, “There are other fish in the sea.” She was right.

Nature abhors a vacuum which is precisely what happens when you remove something from your life.

That applies to clothes as much as it does to people.

Don’t believe me, sell or give away half of all your clothes. Within a short period of time you’ll find all the space you cleared up will be filled with new clothes or items you purchase.

What about people?

Last year when I said goodbye to a close friend because I was no longer willing to be their punching bag, amazingly within a very short time I met someone new who I’m even closer with today.

Now I would like to stress that I’m not saying to walk away from all your friends…what I am asking you to consider is if there is someone in our lives who is constantly causing us stress (for whatever reason) then maybe the best thing for us to do is walk away.

That doesn’t mean we hate them, it just means we love ourselves more.

What I do find funny is the excuses that people come up with to ask for our forgiveness.

The first time it’s family, the next time it’s work, the next an injury, the next a forgotten appointment, the traffic, the alarm clock, the computer, the rain, the heat, the fly on the window…

Now some are obviously acceptable but over time people naturally start keeping score…and from that time on when we are let down, we can’t help think, “What? Again?”

Most of the time the final straw isn’t anything big but rather something small which makes you think, “Hey, if they can’t be bothered to help me with this, then they’ll never be able to.”

For me, a good barometer of how I can judge just how much I can trust another person is to ask them for help when they are busy.

I am willing to drop everything to help a friend if they really need my help and if there are no absolute emergencies on my end.

Why? Because I’m their friend.

In my mind that’s what a friend does. They don’t ask questions when their friend needs help. They just say, “What do you need?”

I will bend over backward to help a friend but not someone who I’ve either lost respect for or who has let me down over and over.

We all have so much to offer so and if our “friends” can’t see that then it’s their loss. We just need to find people that do.

Still not convinced?

Of all your friends which one or two let you down the most? Now if they weren’t in your life, how much easier would your life be?

Today I live a pretty stress-free life thanks to this. It wasn’t easy but I knew in my heart that it was the right thing to do.

Trust your gut. If it’s telling you something’s wrong, it usually is.

Adrian Shepherd

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Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes

As a child I was a wimp.

I let people walk all over me. In elementary school I felt alone at times because many people said I talked funny. On top of that I was skinny which didn’t help.

In junior high there were days when I felt the whole world was against me.

I remembered being invited to a party by one of the “cool” kids and ended up being the brunt of all their jokes. I almost drowned in the swimming pool and they mocked me for being weak though I have always been a good swimmer.

Over the course of my life I let people take advantage of me time and time again.

And yet, despite all this, one thing never changed – I have always believed in who I was.

I have my parents to thank for that.

And over time I have understood just what are good people.

People who know me often say I want things my way and I don’t listen to others. While I admit I talk too much, contrary to what others say, I don’t want things my way; I just want things done right.

If someone else is the right person for the job then great, less work for me.

But when it’s my ass on the line I’m not willing to let people who are incompetent take me down with them.

Business for me is no joke. Neither is education.

You see, time is valuable for me and it should be for you as well.

We aren’t given an unlimited amount. We can’t put more coins in the machine and add time like videos games.

No, each of us is given one lifetime. No more, no less.

So why would I want to live a life less than the one I want? Why should I let people take advantage of my kindness, my time, or my knowledge?

The answers – I wouldn’t and I shouldn’t.

Amazingly it has taken me 30 years or so to realize this simple fact.

Is it too much to demand that people treat us with respect?

Shouldn’t we have mutual respect for one another’s time, money and effort?

I remember once asking my father if he liked everyone who my mother had invited over as she invited a lot of people over the years being the social butterfly that she still is today.

I have never forgotten what he said to me, “There was one man. He came over and was quite disrespectful to your mother so at the end of the evening I told him, in no uncertain terms, that he was not welcome back in our house.”

That was my father and I guess that slowly that part is coming out in me as well.

When we are young we think we need to please everyone but having been around for 37 years now I realize that that’s just not possible. In fact, as Bill Cosby says, “ I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.“

For much of my life I guess I was failing.

We can’t make everyone happy because we all have different values.

As such we need to find people that respect the things in life that we feel are important. If not, you’ll find yourselves at wit’s end more than once.

Now I realize that people do make mistakes. To err is human after all.

But what is critical is that people learn from their mistakes. You may have heard me say this before but it bears repeating, there are three key points to apologizing.

A sincere apology does go a long way. The key word in being SINCERE. Half-assed apologies will only make things worse.
Doing something to make up for their mistake does help smooth things over.
We all need to make an effort to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. If we make the same mistake again people are likely to connect the dots thereby making a seemingly small event much worse.

The other day I posed a question to a few of my close clients, “What would you rather have – no friend or a lousy friend?”

Everyone went with “no friend.”

By letting ourselves be taken advantage of by some people we are taking time away from the people who truly care about us or the opportunity to meet such people.

We should all, as Earl Shoaff once said, “Be sure to stand guard at the door of your mind.”

We all need to understand that we design the life we live by the choices we make.

We must be careful who and what we let in.

I value myself enough to protect myself from those things that aren’t helping me get where I want to go. I hope you do, too.

Adrian Shepherd

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success mistakes: have you ever noticed that it’s always something with some people?

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