If you’re reading this website, you’re likely interested in improving yourself to some degree—after all, I wouldn’t have had some fans—friends of the blog—put me in a blogroll for “self improvement” if I wasn’t in the self-improvement business. If this is the case, congratulations! You’re literally better than about 75% of humanity.
When you get into the self-improvement game and “take the red pill” (which I should point out is not my favorite terminology, but it is popular), you’ll probably notice something once you’ve started to make progress, and it’s one of the biggest detriments to your development as a human being: the fact that rather than celebrating your self-improvement, many of your friends and compatriots will start to hate and resent you for daring to “think you’re better than them”. Pretty soon, your friends will become your former friends.
Needless to say, this has happened to me: Ever since I got into fitness and sex and wanting to make something of myself, I have found that I became completely alienated from most of my old high school friends, almost all of whom were completely stereotypical Dungeons and Dragons playing, acne-encrusted, dateless nerds.
There are, in my opinion, two main reasons for this, and the first is somewhat understandable. The first being that when you set aside time to go to the gym, write music, or practice your elocution, that’s time you’re not devoting to playing video games with them, or watching shitty B-movies with them, or playing Dungeons and Dragons with them-in other words, you are alienating them because you increasingly are sharing fewer and fewer interests with them. And to that extent, their feelings are somewhat sympathetic
The second reason, which I have much less sympathy for, is that losers don’t want to associate with people better than them because it reminds them of their own failure. And god help you if you suggest that they come with you to the gym or to the library. There are few things people hate to be told more than “what’s good for them”.
Again, I speak from experience: I had my friends in high school, all of whom were, like me, huge nerds and dateless wonders. When I started to shuck off my resentments, working out and improving myself, they were alienated by this and told me, in no uncertain terms, that they didn’t want to be my friends anymore.
A few of them managed to pull their shit together and make amends with me, but most of them are still the same dorks they always were, to this day.
Simply put, most people are completely terrible and are perfectly content to wallow in their own mediocrity. And I understand the temptation to turn your back on self-improvement so you don’t lose your friends.
Belay that urge.
If you associate with losers, you’re more likely to be a loser. It’s going to hurt, but I would recommend you ditch them and get some new friends. Get some people who will support your endeavors instead of disparaging them, and sublimate your anger into more training (as I have also advocated in the past)
In fact, it’s when you start getting haters that you know you’re starting to make some progress. Whether you come from a subculture, or some racial/ethnic group that wants to be the proverbial “crab in the bucket” that drags you back, you should welcome hatred as a sign of success. It worked for me, and it will work for you.