How Friendships Affect Fitness

By Dan Grant
[Trainer Talk]
How do you know if you have a true friend?  Dan Grant calls for a change in your social circle.
I usually get the most response from the readers of The Soko is when I talk about friends and how friends can destroy your goals.  Funny thing is that 100 per cent of the emails I’ve ever gotten on the subject agree with me, but I have this sneaking suspicion that only a small number of those people actually made any changes to their social life.

So today I wanted to get a little deeper with you on this subject, make you uncomfortable about it and get you thinking about your friendships.

The Attitude That Just Isn’t True

When you ask somebody what a true friend is, most of them will say, “someone who accepts me for who I am.”  Personally, I think that’s a load of you know what.

Accept you for who you are?  Who are you?  Are you smart or an idiot?  Are you fit or fat?  Are you poor or wealthy?  Do you live a semi-conscious life filled with booze or drugs?  Do you love or hate your job?  Do you settle for comfortable and acceptable in your relationships, school, jobs, social time, etc?

Why on earth would you want someone to accept you for who you are?

I mean, if you plan on never growing, never getting better, never reaching life changing goals, then I guess that quote could apply.  But why would you live your only shot at life doing that?

So What Is A True Friend?

True friends will help you change and help you become a better person.  If you accept a friend for who they are, then you have a convenient friend.  Having a friend just because they are fun to hang out with or they help you out every once in a while is not necessarily the healthiest choice.  Convenient friends are okay, but can be very dangerous to have, because they are the ones that can be slowing you down without you even realizing it.

Having more friends doesn’t necessarily mean a better life.  It can give the illusion of a better life because there’s always something to do, but a lot of what that something is really shows deep down your values (the stuff that determines why we make certain decisions in our life).

It’s your values that truly determine what kind of friends you have in your life.  I sometimes complain that I don’t have a mass of friends in my life, but it’s because of my values.  I want people in my life that want a great life and want to experience it in a fun and amazing way.  Those people seem hard to find sometimes, because the majority of people out there are doing themselves a great disservice by settling for the curse called mediocrity.
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