Ep 337 | Before You Add to Your Circle of 5, You May First Need to Subtract

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Lately here at No Days Off, we have been talking about your environment, improving your environment. We've also been discussing the whole circle of 5 concept where you are the average of the 5 people you're spending the most time with. Your habits are the average, your income is the average, your behavior is the average of the 5 people you're spending the most time with. And as we've been having this conversation, I've received a note or 2 from some of our No Days Off Nation asking me, hey, if I have to, you know, if I'm looking to improve my circle of 5, that's great, 'But what do I do to subtract people from my current circle? Subtract them and not create friction or resentment. These are people that I care about. These are people that, that matter to me. Maybe they're people I've known for years. So what's the best way for me to scale back on these relationships without creating too many issues?' It's an excellent question. And it's something that I'm guessing many of you have probably dealt with successfully or unsuccessfully. It's certainly something I've had to deal with from time to time over, over my life. I remember when I made a conscious decision to improve my circle. It was about 16 years ago, and, and I know it was exactly 16 years ago because I made several key decisions at 29 years old, and, and I decided it was time to change up my circle. Now, I loved my friends, I loved the people I was spending time with, but I started— my goals started to change. I started growing up a little bit, and I did realize that my environment had to change. And there was one individual in particular, I'll keep his name out of it, that was someone I'd known for years. I mean, I more or less grew up with him um, had played sports with him, had a really deep relationship with him. And he also happened to be spending probably a night every week on my couch, and even a night every week on the couch that then my, my fiancée and I— and soon-to-be wife— had. And again, love this guy, great friend, but his vision for where he wanted to go and what he wanted to accomplish— well, frankly, I don't even know if he had one. And I had decided it was time to get serious about life, about business, about a lot of things. And I concluded that as much as I love this individual, it was time to scale back on that relationship. And I had to think about it quite a bit because it was going to be sensitive. It was going to be tough. The first thing that I think we have to do, and I'm glad that I think I did this part right, I think the first thing is we've got to openly and honestly communicate what's going on. See, I, I really believe in this concept of when in doubt, disclose. Like, anytime you have doubt as to whether or not you should say something, always default to disclosing. Usually it's harder to disclose on the front end, but it saves you a lot of pain, anger, tears on the back end when you do so. So I'm a big fan of just straight up disclosing. And I remember going back to this story and this individual, I had approached him and I had to be honest and I had to be respectful. And I had to tell him straight up that my goals had changed. I was making several changes in my life and it was about me and my personal growth. And it had nothing to do with him. I furthermore told him that he's incredibly valuable to me as a friend, as a peer, as a mentor, and that I appreciated him. I appreciated his friendship and I appreciated all of the experiences we had shared, but going forward, things might look a little bit different. And I remember him looking at me thinking, what the hell book did you read this time? And I don't blame him because, uh, you know, at that time I definitely was doing some exploration in terms of trying to learn and grow, and I probably had lots of what would appear to be rogue ideas. Um, so that was a fair question, but I think he could tell I was, I was pretty serious. And even though I was pretty honest and I think I was pretty respectful, I remember him thinking or saying, you must think you're too good for me. Which was not the case at all, but that was his default. And that was hard and it hurt, but I recognized that I was going to outgrow some relationships and it was going to— I would have to be okay with it. And so I was prepared for, for, you know, the side effects of this. Now, once I communicated with respect and honesty and and I expressed some gratitude. I then had to start this process of what I would call gradual transition. It wasn't just, okay, we're gonna abruptly change our relationship today. No, over the course of the next several weeks or months, I began to reduce contact. So it wasn't an abrupt cutting of the ties, it was just reduced frequency of interaction, which actually was not all that hard because I had made decisions across my whole life to approach things differently. And a lot of the places where we would hang out or spend time, I began to eliminate those things from my life altogether, so it made it easier to reduce our contact. Slowly reducing the contact really helped with the transition, and I had to really start to prioritize my time in a different way. I had to be more selective about the events and the activities that I was participating in. I actually started saying no far more often, not because this individual was going to be there. Again, love, still love the guy, but I started saying no to things that didn't align with my new goals. And the byproduct of that was this gradual transition, this reduction of time. Now, after I communicated honestly and openly and I started focusing on this gradual transition I then was able to, you know, be even more purposeful around building my, my new world and again distancing myself not just from this one individual but other people in my life. We did though still spend time, and when we spent time, I did try to make the most of it. And, you know, went from, say, seeing each other every week to maybe seeing each other every month. I still aim to maintain a friendly relationship. I just didn't want to deepen the emotional connection. We'd still spend time together, but I'd steer conversations towards different positive topics or different interests and not the traditional stuff that I was trying to move my life away from. I was also doing my best without, you know, crossing the line. I was really trying to encourage him. To pursue new goals or new interests. And I thought, while it didn't work in this particular example, I do think it did work in others. I think I created a mutual understanding with others in that we were gonna go on different paths, but they were gonna go on their own journey. In other words, I encourage growth and I encourage them to pursue their interests and their goals, and it created this mutual understanding and respect for each other's paths. So again, a real, real gradual yet tactical process in terms of creating more separation so that my new environment— remember, I've got to subtract from my current circle of 5 if I want to begin to add to my circle of 5. In a previous episode a few, few days back, we, we discussed what it means or how you go about adding 5. But again, you've got to subtract and create more room in order to add those 5. Now, I described it as it— and it went pretty well even though I got a little pushback initially. But I do think you've got to manage reactions as well. I think you got to be prepared for reactions. You got to understand that, that the person that you've been honest and upfront with and said, hey, we're going to distance a bit, they might feel hurt or confused. So I do think you've got to be empathetic, and I do think you have to be patient with their reactions. You've got to stay firm in your decision, but you've got to be patient. You've got to allow time to play out. It may be hard initially, but if you are truly committed to changing up your circle and changing up your environment, you've got to be firm in your decision and just be patient with their reactions. And you've got to stay consistent. You can't waver. You can't create confusion and mixed signals. For me, and I'm going to be rather direct and vulnerable here, you know, this individual, if I haven't already implied it, you know, we had a pretty big social world together. You know, I, um, couldn't separate myself from that social world we frequented. Maybe it was the nightlife or the bars or whatever, and then just randomly show up and go, go all out again and act like our friendship hadn't changed. That'd be rather confusing. It would— I'd be sending some really mixed signals. And so I couldn't waver. Now lastly, with respect to this relationship, there's a long-term maintenance aspect of it. You got to stay polite, you got to stay kind. Even if you're scaling back, you got to continue to be polite and kind in all of your interactions. Show kindness, still spend time together in key days and birthdays and things like that, and always leave the door open. Meaning that if their circumstances change, or maybe they go on their own journey and they're growing, maybe even growing past you, maybe there's reason to reconnect. Maybe you're on different terms in the future and it makes more sense then. So this is, um, this is kind of a hard topic, right? It's, it's, it's kind of a weird one to talk around. You've got to subtract some people from your world if you want to add some people. But the reality is, again, you're going to outgrow some relationships if you're committed to this journey of growth. If you're committed to this No Days Off movement, you are going to outgrow some relationships, and it's going to have to be okay. But you don't have to end things abruptly. There is a process. You still love these people just the same, just the quantity of time spent together is going to be scaled back, and there's a process for it. And that's what we've run through today. So the focusing question for you today— or questions, I should say— number one, Gosh, rather direct, but who do you have to subtract from your world so that you could open up new seats to create a different environment? Now that you've identified those people, what do you think might be the steps? I mean, is it what I covered here today or is there a few more things you'd add? What are the steps to maybe creating the distance and transitioning, you know, that relationship? Now, the last thing I'm going to say, I think it's really important to self-reflect. I think it's really important to look in the mirror and ask yourself, do I deserve a new circle, right? You start subtracting people, but you're not as committed to the journey as you think you are, and you're going to be doing some backpedaling. So you want to make sure that you're committed to this. You want to reflect on your own personal behaviors, your own mindset. Make sure that you're committed because it's pretty tough to take back some of the things I'm just describing here. Let's lot to think around today. I appreciate you taking time to listen. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.