Are your friends all WINNERS?

Prompted by a review of some new Oprah biography I heard. Oprah likes to surround herself with upbeat, successful, ambitious people so that she in turn can be upbeat, successful and ambitious. What do you think of this philosophy? Of course it seems rather odious when described so quickly, but I have totally had the feeling of sometimes being "dragged down" by someone I know who is in a temporary or even permanent state of inertia. But I'm hopefully not a bastard, so I want all my friends to be happy doing whatever it is that they do and would gladly try to help them, expecting the same in return. I've also had the feeling that when I'm on a downer, certain people I know would rather not see me than deal with the negativity. Fair enough, in some contexts. But which is it? Is it always asking for bad karma to shake off loser friends and coworkers who are weighing you down?

I'm asking for a friend (who is a bastard)

Going by this evening's conversation all my friends are disillusioned and set on quitting academia. They're still my friends if that's the question.

Oprah is a celebrity and worth about $700 million, so naturally she lives in a fantasy land of her own devising, because she can. She's a bit like Michael Jackson in that way, but with a less abberant fantasy life, so fewer people notice how weird it all is.

http://limen11.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/oprah-car-giveaway.jpg

but aimless, surely you get the drift of my question. I guess I shouldn't have used her as the lead-in

i don't see how one can think someone is a loser and consider them a friend at the same time. whiners, that's another story.

It sounds pretty odious to judge someone by how successful they are in life, unless you believe being a winner is entirely determined by determination and not by luck or circumstances. Always, relentlessly upbeat chirpy people are really grating.

this probably just shows how insecure i am (and *lol* how few good friends i have these days), but i can only imagine dropping a friend if they did something fucked up to me. or became a crazed teabagger or something.

I'm a loser amongst winners.

OK let's change "friends" to "regular acquaintances"

This is kind of an interesting question to me! In the last two years I have become *way* more driven - like the idea of sitting back and reading a book all day has come to seem really strange - and it's weirdly hard to get into my previous mindset to emphasize with my old self! So I'm in the weird position of suddenly finding 'overachievers' really admirable, yet not really knowing any or understanding how to talk to them.

Let's change "overachievers" to just "achievers"

I mean we're talking about people who are just miserable, really self-centred, turn everything into a reason to whine, will not help themselves WILL NOT CHANGE. And you feel sucked into all their terrible bullshit when you're with them, and you try to help, but they don't listen to you because they're too involved in themselves. And you feel like time spent without them is like a breath of fresh country air after a month working down in the mines. But then also, ALSO, you've been there. You've been them.

What do you do

What do you do, achievers of ILX?

A friend of mine, who I've mentioned on the board before, recently revealed to me via email that he felt the need to back away from me because I was laid off, thus not upbeat and successful enough for him. Fuck this philosophy.

wow. fuck that person

Yes that is shitty, but there are shades of grey here. You are presumably "not upbeat" because of a specific situation, and a friend should be sensitive to this. I'm talking more about a tendency in people.

I think I just set this up really badly

I mean, that is obv a terrible fucking thing to say to someone. I don't think anyone here will disagree.

I guess this is how we decide who our friends are, and decisions are made on both sides.

Oh I can totally understand the intent of the thread, just had to throw my personal experience out there.

mega xpost

admrl, I do not suppose you are either rich enough or powerful enough to strew the streets with empty husks of former friends you have discarded for the sole reason that they are not WINNERS and you have perversely decided that therefore they are not good enough for you.

People are slender reeds and have many faults. I include myself. You, too. We need help and understanding in our frailty. It is therefore necessary to dole out help and understanding whenever we are up to the task. The crassness of Oprah's "philosophy" is somewhat horrific, but merely symptomatic of a larger disease often miscalled "success" in the USA media.

As for people who are "miserable, really self-centred, turn everything into a reason to whine, will not help themselves WILL NOT CHANGE", the very description you have made proves that you do not regard them as friends.

Just try to be helpful. It is not necessary to believe what they say or to be recruited into their misery. When they are wrong, challenge them by offering a more complete or truthful version of events, motives and circumstances. Don't give them a free pass to whine. Do this consistently and either they will amend their ways, or they'll choose to drop you as a friend. No bad karma that way. ;)

i just try to surround myself with people who enjoy life (most of the time.) i have friends who are down a lot of the time and i try to give them life advice, which isn't me trying to direct them but trying to show them that there is always a way out of certain types of misery (the most common being job-related or dating related, ime...)

With a single exception, myself and all of my friends are losers in the sense that we have little ambition, aren't really professionally successful, and are mostly socially and professionally inert. None of us are particularly whiny, miserable, or self-centered, though, usually. I generally find driven, "work hard, play hard" "leaders" to be frightening, borderline-sociopathic, self-centered pieces of shit, but, like, it's probably just because I don't understand their point of view or something.

friendship is ~ mysterious~ imo - i try not to be too uptight abt it

if someone was all i am friends w/u because u are winner and i luv yr vibes id be like stop tryina steal my juice bro jus be chill

Thanks, aimless. just to be clear - I have not discarded friends I perceive as miserable losers, never ever. And I am not some work hard play hard sociopath (haha far from it). Although what you propose sounds excellent in practice, it is also tremendously wearying at times, especially when someone else's misery starts to encroach upon your own ability to get the simple things done. But maybe, as you said, these are not friends. It's a really tough judgement call, particularly, as I said, because I have been on the other side. And it seems like in those situations I actually ended up helping myself instead of leaning on others, probably because I was too afraid to ask more than anything else.

http://bgta.es/blogger/imatges/stand_alone.jpg

turn that gaspar noe into a gaspar YES

my friends are total winners and i'm envious of all of them! very smart and accomplished bunch of people.