I have a friend who has a lot of big plans in life, they want to go to all these places and achieve all of these things. This friend wants to work for some cool company, like Google or Microsoft or a successful gaming company.
They thought they could achive all this by going to school for just a short period of time, and then all this would magically happen!
My friend is truly an optimist, to the point of their dreams just being fantasies.
My friend has barely any education, and never did that well in school. They have not made any effort to try and reach all these dreams, they did not go travel or study or what not, even though they had all these elaborate plans.
Now my friend still lives with their parents, with no education or job experience.
My friend is a non-achiever, and there are several reasons for this, just one being mental problems. Don't get me wrong, they aren't menally ill, they are still a fully functioning human being, with no problems in the thinking department. But ya know, depression and such are also mental issues.
Of course personality also plays a big part. My friend likes to complain, and only look at the bad side of things. They have been given lot's of things in their life, and a lot of help and support from loving parents, but it's not helping.
I have lost hope for my friend. If it continues on like this, they will never have a job and will end up living alone in the small town where they grew up, living on government support.
I consider myself quite a high-achiever. Sure, sometimes I lack willpower, but I always push through in the end and I fight for what I want to achieve. So talking to this friend doesn't really give me anything, being with them doesn't motivate me to become a better person, or strive higher in life. They just leave me feeling confused as to how people can be like them, not striving for anything, never really accomplishing anything.
Maybe it's bad of me, but I want to surround myself with people who have goals they want to achive, goals that they try their best to reach, goals that aren't just childish dreams. People that work hard and inspire you. I feel like this friend is not one of these people, this friend is only a negative.
And I feel bad for feeling this. One part of me is saying that "It's not their fault!" while another says "They are responsible for where they are in life!".
It makes me feel like a bad person, but after talking to them only a little while ago, I feel like this is the kind of friend I might leave behind. Let them live their life in this pitiful state of blaming others for what they cannot do or achieve, and you live my life surrounded by the kind of people that don't drag you down.
Not sure why I am writing this here, but a Freakonomics podcast about Grit just got me thinking about this and I had to get my feelings out, because I feel kinda guilty for having them.
I wish my friend the best of luck in their life, and hope that they can get out of the destructive mindset they have been in all this time, because grit, as they said in the podcast, isn't something you are necessarily born with, it's something you can create within yourself.
