How to Lose Friends and Bore People.

Happy Monday friend.

A Kiambu county-based life coach and actuarial scientist who I believe may not want me to mention her name here for now was candidly chatting with me one Sunday afternoon. I had reclined on a couch. She was about a social distance on my side. And talking about self-development and other stuff.

“Nick, I quit alcohol and I am feeling like I am already an outcast among my friends.”

“Listen, Anita, [not her real name] self-development is detrimental to friendship,” I told her. This was an idea I learned from Naval Ravikant and I have tested it for fairly enough time by now.

[Name hidden] was looking me in the eyes when a moment of silence ensued. It was as if she was wowed and wondering how I arrived at that conclusion. The only sound was the audio from the Bing Bang Theory TV series which was playing on Netflix.

This wonderful woman had gone ahead and told me a personal story about her friends. One of her girlfriends was open to telling her that if she(this life coach pal of mine) was going to quit alcohol, then she( her friend) was going to quit their friendship because she feared a life of sobriety while her friend was sober. The reason for her friend proposing this was that it would look totally weird to her and even make her feel like a loser amongst sober people.

How will I appear to you when I am drunk? What will you think of me when I keep drinking while you sober up every day? These are some of the questions Anita was asked by her friend.

Our chat then transcended to the Kenyan economy and how creating in the digital space can get you both time and location freedom and properly shield you from that inflation heat. All of which I am not going to discuss today.

However, it is the small opening story that is the basis of this short letter.

By now my dear friend, you have established and even got used to the main principle of this publication. I mean, you know very well that for us at Nick’s letters, we hold high the philosophy of self-work and personal development. And as you can see from the story, the moment you decide that you won’t be bullshitting yourself with useless life pleasure and bad habits, people are going to naturally pull away from you. I have several life experiences to defend this statement. My friend Anita is almost going to defend that. And an American writer and angel investor has already proved that to us.

On a personal note, I lost a lot of friends and homies from the day I decided to hit the gym and care about my body. on top of that, I bored people a lot from just my writing which is now accumulating somewhere in a corner of the internet. And even today, I still bore some by simply refusing to turn to some events and occasions. That is why I affirm and remind you again that yes, self-development is detrimental to friendships. Yes, choosing to build yourself up is the one good way to lose friends and bore people.

Anyway. I hope I have not bored you by now neither am I going to lose you. But if that is the case, feel free to use the unsubscribe button under this email.

As I wind down, personal development comes down to improving the way we think, act, and how we see the world. And as we begin, we start to lose friends and bore people. But f*ck ‘em because we are not gonna stop!

It is by careful investigation of our thought processes, reflections, and actions that we can highlight the issues in our lives and choose to fix them. Swiss psychiatrist and healer Carl Gustav Jung used to teach that self-development begins with looking at our current situation. One of the common and best ways to look at our current situation is becoming someone who thinks. Yes, become a thinker! Because your thoughts come from your environment and will influence your actions. Then your actions eventually influence where you end up in life.

Read more about the rare act of thinking when you head over to my blog for a fresh and well-researched article on just that.

Read: On Reason and Thinking.

Until next Monday fam!