How do you know if someone’s your friend?

You can tell them bad news, and they’ll listen. They won’t tell you you’re stupid, and why that bad thing happened to you, and how something worse happened to them once, and you derail the whole conversation or judge you as if they are better, and you are all shades of unfortunate

You can tell them good news, and they’ll help you celebrate. That is a really good way of deciding who you should have around you because if you have someone around you who knows something good happened to you, you’re kind of afraid to even admit it because you know once you share the good news, their mood will change, and they will immediately ruin your joy and talk about the great thing that happened to them three years ago or, worse, the great thing that happened to someone that they knew three years ago. You know it’s time to go away from that person because he or she is not helpful to you, and they’re not helpful to themselves either

You have to surround yourself with people who want the best for you

You can hang around with weasels and losers that are trying to pull you down to justify the fact that they’re spiralling downhill as well, and you know the upside of that is you don’t have to have any responsibility, and you can all whine about how wretched life is. That is a pretty attractive option to many people because it requires no creativity, industriousness, or invention from you. I would say it is a medium to long-term plan.

It’s acceptable and desirable to try to surround yourself with people who facilitate your development

You might say, well, I’ve got people around, I know them well, they’re not doing that well, and they don’t fit into that category.

I will have to ask, ‘What’s your point?’ What are you going to do with them? If they’ll listen and cooperate with you and move towards a better future, you can keep them and consider them as friends

If they don’t pay any attention and they keep doing the same things over and over and they’re not going anywhere in life, regardless of your history and emotional sentiment, I will advise you to take the painful course by saying you guys can have your misery. I will go off and have my life

You will wake up at some point in the future and realise you have made the best decision for yourself and for them, because just putting up with it is enabling.

If you put up with that sort of behaviour, you’re providing tacit consent for it and even tacit approval

I would say you have both the right and the responsibility to surround yourself with people who are good for the best part of you and who can also bring out the very best of you in you!