Brian Gubernick argues your closest friends should challenge you to grow, not just accept you as you are. He outlines five ways friends can push each other forward: open communication, shared challenges, accountability, celebrating progress, and supportive guidance. Love must come first before you can deliver hard truths.
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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. Now, if you are listening to today's podcast, maybe you caught the title. Title's a little, uh, maybe thought-provoking, I guess might be a good way to say it. In that I believe that your friends, especially your good friends, your best friends, I actually believe they should not be very accepting of you. Now, stick with me. I know that might sound a little crazy, but let me explain. So, you know, as you know, and I shared just recently on a past episode, I'm a big fan of Ed Mylett, and I was listening to something Ed was saying And it got me thinking about this, about my friends, my best friends, those that, you know, I think have been there for me for a long time. And one common thread that I saw amongst these friends was that these guys are anything but accepting of me. They're actually quite the opposite. And it made me realize that I don't think your friends should be accepting of you. Now, I think your friends should receive you, but they should not necessarily accept you. See, the guy at the gas station that you're paying accepts you for who you are. The waiter at the restaurant you go to who has no emotional attachment or care for you just accepts you, that you are who you are. But I think your best friends, your friends, they're not accepting of you. They actually should be expecting more out of you. They should expect you to be better. I think good friends should constantly challenge you to be a better person, to be better in your career, to be a better mother or father. I think they should push you. I think they should help you grow. I think your best friend should be encouraging you to go learn more, to go listen more, to go ask better questions. Your good friend should constantly be challenging you, and if they're not, well, I don't know how good of a friend they happen to be, respectfully, right? Because who doesn't want their best friends to get better or become better human beings? Now, it goes without saying, you have to have their best interests in mind. Love, in my opinion, really has to show up or arrive or be foundationally established before truth. Like, you've got to earn the right as a friend before you can really challenge and you can push. I think we would agree on that. But once you've earned that right, once you have credibility, I believe your best friend should be anything but accepting of you. Now, this is my philosophy about friendships. It might, might be a reason why I have a relatively small circle of friends, but I think it's really based around my approach to personal growth. I think it's important to have friends who inspire you. Especially inspire you to be better and challenge you to grow. I think this leads to meaningful development. I also think that if your friends are inspiring you to be better and challenging you to grow and you're making no progress, they're probably going to leave you, or at least should leave you in some sense if they're trying to continue to grow. Remember, we've talked about the circle of 5 and how you're always trying to up your circle of 5. Of course you're trying to up your circle of 5, and those that are with you, if they're not growing alongside you, you outgrow them and look for a new circle. That's kind of what I'm saying here. So you got to have friends that inspire you to be better, and you've got to keep up with them. The idea also that love has to come before truth, I think reinforces the need for a strong foundation of what? Of trust and of support. And this allows friends to push each other constructively. So this is a balance, I think, of support and challenge. And to me, this leads to healthier or more impactful relationships. Now, how can we, um, maybe as friends, or what can we expect of our friends to more— to do to constructively push one another to become better? Like, what, what ways could good friends constructively push one another to, to just get better? I think there's a few things we could be thinking around. I think good friends can constructively push one another to become better through number 1, open communication. You've got to have an understanding that we can have honest conversation with one another where feedback is welcomed. Because that's the only way that I can help you and you can help me, is if we understand our areas for improvement. And the only way to understand areas for improvement is if they're openly and honestly shared. So number one, I think good friends have to have open communication if they're going to constructively push one another— not accept one another for where they're at today, but push them for where we could both go. Number 2, I think good friends got to set challenges. I think you got to have like goals. Maybe it's fitness goals, or maybe it's business goals, or maybe it's just learning new skills, but we can grow together. I think you have to have some challenges together. Best friends push, push one another to achieve challenges, oftentimes together. I think number 3, we could have accountability between our friends. Our good friends should be checking on, checking in on us with respect to our progress, and we should be checking in on them. Anything absent You know, anything but that to me is just simple acceptance. And again, I don't think good friends should be accepting. Number 4, I think that good friends that are pushing one another effectively should be celebrating progress together as well. We've got to recognize achievements, right? We've got to reinforce this positive behavior. We got to celebrate one another. Even if one of us is winning more than the other, we got to take a— these are our best friends, right? And then number 5, I think good friends that constructively push one another, they've got to provide support. They've got to offer help. They've got to offer guidance. Like, this is a tricky balance here because I'm saying we shouldn't be accepting. So I'm not saying accept failure or accept less than the best effort possible. I'm saying offer help and guidance during difficult times. And to me, this shows commitment. To one another's growth. So, in summary, right, I'll stop preaching, but I just wanted to get this out there because I want to challenge you, right? If you believe in this philosophy, if you agree with what I'm saying, I think you've got to audit maybe your friend group and maybe even take a look in the mirror and audit your own behavior. Are your friends accepting of you in the way that I just described? In other words, are they cool with you just being, you know, average you? Or, or do they expect more out of you? Do they push you to be even better? Do they challenge you? And on the flip side, as a friend, Do you just accept people in your world, your best friends specifically, and just, you know, let them get away with whatever because you just want to be accepting? Or do you talk? Do you do some of the things we described here today? Do you seek open communication and set challenges and create accountability, celebrate success and progress, provide support? Do you do those things? So this is an audit exercise. Who are we spending our time with and who is spending time with us? And how are we operating as friends? Are we simply accepting or are we not accepting but instead pushing and growing together? Something to think around today. 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.
