Why You Must Leave Some People Behind As You Prosper & They Don’t

Why we lose some people as we prosper & they don’t.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a viewer who is disappointed that he lost 2 formerly close childhood friends of over 20 years as he became more successful and prospered in life. They continued to party, struggle financially & live with their parents. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

Hi, I’m Coach Corey Wayne, and this is my Video Coaching Newsletter. And the topic of today’s Newsletter is going to be, “Why You Must Leave Some People Behind As You Prosper & They Don’t”.

Well, this is kind of one of the sad things about life, especially for us high achievers, especially like when you grow up and you think so many people love you, they’re on your team, they want you to be happy. They’re rooting for your success, you root for theirs, hopefully. And then as you start to do really well, especially when you do better than them, then usually the insults and the snickering and the snide comments start happening, and people that had been on your journey from multiple decades start to become a hindrance instead of a help to you reaching your full potential.

And the harsh reality is, most people want you to be happy and they want you to be successful, just as long as you’re not happier and more successful than they are. And so people tend to attack, in other words, human beings tend to attack in other human beings what the other human beings have, or they’re connected to, that they lack. So a happy person is going to get attacked by unhappy people. Successful people are going to get attacked by people that are unsuccessful. If you’re in a great relationship, you’re going to get attacked by people that are not in a great relationship.

Because what people are really looking to do is they’re looking to validate their life and their life choices through their friends, their family, and their peer group. And if your star is shining really bright and there’s this kind of dim, unfortunately a lot of them are going to try to dim your light because they don’t like being reminded of how unsuccessful they are or how much their life is not going as well as yours is. So if they can knock you down a few notches or bring you down to their level, torpedo your relationship so you’re single like them, then they’re going to feel better about their shitty lives.

And so as you take off and you grow, you’re going to leave people behind. And some of them you’re going to have to leave behind on purpose, because again, they just get in the way. They become a downright obstacle to getting in your way and you achieving the things you want. So this particular email is from a viewer. He’s disappointed because he’s lost in the last year two formerly close childhood friends of his. He knew these guys over 20 years. And but he noticed as he became more successful and prospered in life, they continued to party and drink and screw around, struggle financially and basically live with their parents.

And he cared a lot about them as friends. And then he had to check a couple of them just because their drinking was getting out of hand or whatever, or they were trying to pressure him to drink. And he’s just like, “I’m not doing this stuff anymore.” And so they didn’t react too well to that at the point where they removed him on Social Media and they’re just like, screw you. And they wanted nothing to do with them. And it’s hard. It’s hard when that starts happening.

It’s hard when you have people, you may have had old roommates or people that you were close with, and then as you get older, they want nothing to do with you, or you post something on Social Media that’s political in nature, and they choose the other side of the aisle. And then now somebody that had been in your life for 30 years doesn’t want anything to do with you. It’s like, but that’s life. You want people that are like, hell, yeah, they want to be with you on your fun bus. Because as Oprah Winfrey once said, which is a good quote, she said, “everybody wants to ride in your limo, but a true friend will take the bus with you when your limo’s in the shop.” And it’s true.

True friends love you whether you’re doing well or you’re struggling. They’re just happy to have the friendship. And no matter what, they always have a positive, encouraging word. So pay attention, especially as you start to become more successful. Who’s truly rooting for you and who’s talking shit. Because like I said, I started noticing that in my early 20s after, you know, when I was in college, my friends were starting to graduate and come home.

People that I’d grown up with had known most of my life were just kind of like, they turned into dickheads. They went from being nice to me and happy to hang out, to just being an ass to me. And then eventually you just, you leave them behind because they don’t. Again, they don’t like being reminded that you’re so successful and they’re not.

Viewer Email:

Hi Corey,

I wanted to get your input on something that’s been on my mind. A few months ago, I had a major falling out with two of my closest friends. I’m 33 now, living with my girlfriend in our apartment, and our relationship is going really well. Over the past few years, I’ve moved away from partying, focused on my relationship and hobbies, and even had some of my artwork featured in downtown galleries, something I’m very proud of.

Oh congratulations, Dude.

Meanwhile, one of my friends, Bob, is still into the party lifestyle and living at home, while Rob is also living at home and often struggling financially.

Yeah, the reality is what I notice is that the friends that stayed in touch and that I stayed in touch with, and who went the distance in life, because I’m 55, are the ones that also were successful and hungry. And it’s like, you know, we all had friends that we loved in high school, but as we became more successful, they just kind of went by the wayside, and especially the ones that became negative and sometimes openly hostile towards us and our success or jealous and envious of it.

They just became a drag to be around. Because, you know, a lot of it is they’re making excuses for their lives and then talking shit about you to try to make you feel bad for your own success. It’s like they try to dim your light. Because in other words, they try to dim your light down to their level because they don’t like the fact that you’re a bright light.

The three of us were always close, but once I started shifting my focus, things changed. Bob and I argued after I set boundaries around not drinking and partying, and we’ve since fallen out of touch. Rob also pulled away, and both of them eventually deleted me from Social Media.

20 year friendship. Just, “Poof”. Yeah, I saw that too. I mean, I had friends that like, you know, we were like buddies. We were there for each other during college and everything. And I remember when the orange man got elected, boy, they just posted something nasty on Social Media and were like, “up yours. Unfriended me.” And it was like, like, “who is this person? What the fuck happened to them?” But obviously the friendship wasn’t that important. And that’s again, that’s what you realize. The people that love you are going to be with you no matter what. And the people that are kind of posers and aren’t really sincere.

Again, how are Rob and Bob going to really help you reach your full potential when both of them are struggling financially or partying and drinking, doing drugs or whatever, and just not going for what they want in life. They’re not going to. Because everybody has those days where things are difficult and you’re going to doubt yourself because the reality is succeeding in anything in life most of the time it looks like it’s not going to work out. And you’re going to have those the doubts yourself. And so when you are having a day and you’re full of doubts. You want people around you to be like, “hey man, it’s just another day. Get back up. But tomorrow’s another day.

Get after it, get knocked down, get back up again. That’s just. That’s life. You can do it. You’ve always done it. You’ll figure it out, Dude. I have faith in you.” That’s what a good friend is going to say. But a friend it’s not. So I told you that was a stupid idea. You should never spend your money on it. You shouldn’t have done that. You shouldn’t have applied for that job. Who the fuck do you think you are that you could be some successful entrepreneur, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. That’s kind of shit you hear, especially when you’re struggling. If you’re struggling, you’re an entrepreneur and you’re struggling and you have other friends that are not entrepreneurs. They work for other people.

And when you’re doing well, they’re jealous and envious. And when you’re not, They basically want to knock you back down to their level. So you take a job and you settle like them. But that’s why it’s important to have people that are high achievers. As Nick Saban said, “mediocre people don’t like high achievers, and high achievers don’t like mediocre people.” Like attracts like. People who like the same things tend to like each other. And so Rob and Bob, you know that, look how they amount. “Where are they? Where are they going to go in life?” I mean, I had a friend that I used to play a lot of video games with in high school. We would skip class to go play video games.

And I remember after we graduated, we spent a lot of time that summer going to parties because, you know, before everybody went away to college and we started college. And I realized especially when I, you know, started school, it’s like just couldn’t stay up all night and play video games with him. And he was taking classes and kind of goofing off. I hadn’t, you know, I was going for an engineering degree in construction management, so I had a lot of physics and calculus and math classes, engineering, economic analysis, trigonometry. I just had a lot of really hard classes. And so I couldn’t be a fucking goofball like him. I was working, and he was working odd jobs here and there.

He would get a job and he would get fired for doing something stupid. And I never had that experience. I didn’t get fired from my jobs. I had people that really liked and valued having me around. And he was just a lazy fuck up. And I just eventually stopped hanging out with him just because he was a drag. And I remember later years, 20 years later, he ended up, you know, getting arrested because he was stealing from a place that he was working. I was like, what a fucking moron. We still see him at the reunions and stuff like that, but I wouldn’t hang out with him one on one, like I used to do in high school, just because he wasn’t going anywhere.

And when you’re trying to go somewhere and you’ve got somebody like that there, like a boat anchor around your neck. Most people, major and minor things. I had big goals, big dreams, big ambitions. And he just wanted to know where the next party and the good time was. And hanging out with somebody like that, that just, I knew we just totally grew apart. I had other friends that were great guys, came from good families, but they drank and they partied too much. And one of them in particular, he drank so much, he had a bunch of DUIs and eventually ended up killing some people, driving drunk on one of the umpteenth times that he had done it.

And so he spent a lot of years in prison because of it. It’s like, you know, we would hang out and he would get too drunk and mouth off to somebody. And because he was so fucked up, he’d get punched in the mouth. And it’s like, I like, I want to go out and have a good time. I want to go out with somebody that had everything. He had every advantage. He’s handsome. His parents were rich. He could go to any school he wanted. Girls were crazy about him, but he was a fucking drunk, and he ended up in prison.

And it’s like, you know, I stopped hanging out with that particular friend. We were like, 19, 20 years old when he got arrested because he went nuts when he got drunk one night. It was like, uh, every time we hung out, it’s like you end up babysitting the guy. I mean, that’s just life. You love em. But if somebody can’t get their shit together, I mean, sometimes you just gotta leave them behind. There’s hair floating around here. Always fun with the puppies. So that’s just life.

Here’s what I’m struggling with. Why is it so often the people closest to you who seem to resent your growth or success or dislike that you’re no longer the same version of yourself?

Well, again, people want you to be successful and happy, but they have a real problem with you being more successful and happier than they are because you’re like a mirror to them. You’re a mirror of what they could be. And since they’re not living up to their full potential, they resent the fuck out of it. They don’t want to be reminded of it. That’s why they try to dim your light and sabotage your success. Torpedo your good relationship. It’s because they want to bring you down to their level. Because if they are successful at knocking you off the mountain, then that justifies their continued moving at the same pace and being the same mediocre person that they were before.

And so, you know, just again, like Nick Saban said, “mediocre people don’t like high achievers, and high achievers don’t like mediocre people.” And if you want to reach your full potential and you got friends like this guy had, I had plenty of friends that were like this. Even though you loved them, you grew up together known each other since elementary school, they can’t go to the same destination that you’re going to go. They’re just too weak minded. And so you can love them, and you can wish them well. But at the end of the day, they’re not on your team. Like when I graduated high school, I thought I had hundreds of friends.

When I realized I really only had about five friends, like people I could count on one hand that were real, true friends that would go the distance through the decades. All those other people. I really started seeing it in my early 20s that they weren’t really on my team. They pretended to be on my team. But once we got older, and especially as I started leaving them behind, they didn’t want to be around me. And quite frankly, I kind of felt the same way. And you just leave him behind and they can’t be nice and respectful if they don’t have a positive word of encouragement, whether you’re up or whether you’re down, you got to cut some people loose. That’s just life. It’s disconcerting. It sucks, but that’s the way most people are.

Finding good people who are good to you, good for you and good for your soul is really fucking rare. I say it all the time. It’s like, how often do you meet a new best friend? It’s like, hardly ever happens. So getting upset that you haven’t met the perfect woman for you yet, or the next best love of your life, or next great love of your life. It just doesn’t happen very often. When it comes to women, you get 1 to 3 a decade. So you gotta prepare yourself with the wisdom in 3% Man and Mastering Yourself because, as Confucius said, “success depends upon prior preparation and without preparation, preparation there is sure to be failure.” Definitely something to think about.

I cared deeply about these guys; we had nearly 20 years of friendship, and it’s tough to reconcile how quickly it unraveled. Thank you always, your work has helped me tremendously throughout the years. 

Well, you’re welcome and we all have to go through it. You know every high achiever has had this experience. I saw a video recently where Snoop Dogg was talking about this. He had guys that he grew up with that came from the same neighborhood that he did. And as he took some people with him, but most of them he just left behind because they didn’t have what it took. They weren’t willing to do the little things because they were mediocre people.

And again, mediocre people don’t like high achievers. Because again, if you’re a high achiever, hanging out with a mediocre person, they don’t like to be reminded that they’re mediocre and you just being around them irritates the fuck out of them because you are everything that they wish they could be. That’s why haters don’t really hate you. Haters want to be you. It’s definitely something to think about.

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