One common motivational advice I often see on Instagram and talked around is to lose your toxic friends. It’s often justified with the ‘you are the average of the top 5 people you spend time with’.

This advice is bullshit because it puts the blame on others rather than pushing us to grow. If you are not making the progress you want to in life and you cut out all your toxic friends, you will still not be making progress, and you’ll be lonely.

The natural way of going about self-development is to find the flaws in yourself first and work on improving them. When you do that, two things will happen:

• You will be less influenced by toxic behaviour
• You will make new friends who are supportive and push you to make further progress

No matter how much I progress, I cannot leave my old friends behind?

This is still a personal flaw. Being kind is a good quality to have. People pleasing is not. Not being able to tell people ‘no’ will ensure growth never happens. It is necessary to have the self-awareness of what is good for us and what isn’t and be able to risk losing friends if they do not share the same vision.

When you grow, naturally you will lose any friends that are toxic to you because they will try to bring you down rather than help you progress.

What could happen though is this – friends you thought were toxic just had different views on life than you. The friendship will then change for the better, you will have your boundaries and views and they will theirs.

When you meet positive people, be proactive in maintaining the friendship

Many people in the world have a negative attitude towards life. Yes, life is unfair. But blaming others, going with a ‘I can’t’ attitude isn’t going to make things better.

When you find friends with positive attitude who also want to develop and make progress and make a change in the world, be supportive of them too. Make friends with these people, even if they live far away – you never know when you may be able to work together.

If you find a unicorn, grab it by the horn.

There are rare people in the world, that are not only positive for us, but they make life significantly better. It may be a partner, it may be a friend but they have an aura around them that makes life so much more pleasurable. These are the people where sometimes you will make sacrifices for, and they will for you. Quality relationships with people are the biggest factor in enjoying life.

Self-development doesn’t have to be a lonely thing. With very few like-minded friends, you can fast forward each other’s growth and enjoy the progress in life.