People say it about relationships all the time and it seems to stay true. NEVER BURN BRIDGES. I have a tendency to want to pull out the gasoline and burn bridges down! To just torch relationships as soon as they don’t bring forth certain fruit that I am expecting. It has nothing to do with the individuals, just with me. Typically this occurs when I am not living up to the knowledge and ideas I am aware of. I get frustrated by people who ask me for advice and then do not apply it in their lives (The reason I get so frustrated is because I do the exact same thing).
In the last month or so I have had many relationships come full circle. By this I mean that people who I may not have spent much time with before the last month have come flooding back into my life. It has been powerful, quite a few people for many different reasons. They all seem like new relationships because they are much clearer now, and much of the conversation is different from before when we were friends.
Some have come back because we just ran into each other, some because they have been thinking differently, some because I have been thinking differently. A few have come back because I have wanted to involve them for sometime. It is one of those weird things that happens where you notice a big difference in your life and it keeps happening. Kind of like when you see a new car that you like and now you cannot miss one on the road, and you never noticed them before but now you can’t not notice them.
The moral of the story, I guess, is keep all relationships away from the fire. Yes some people may do dumb stuff to us, take advantage, or whatever, but the key is to never burn a bridge. We may need to distance ourselves from them for a while but never burn it down. For me many times I think I have to burn things down but I tend to drift away from people. It is a natural process to drift in and out of friendship with people. I look forward to who I will run into tomorrow. Life is great. People are the only truly valuable things in our lives.

Just recently I have partnered with a very good friend of mine, Tate Denna. It has been powerful to partner with him and create and implement new ideas with him. We have been attracting many top producers into our lives and experience. Our premise for partnering is that we are almost complete opposites. Tate is very hands on, implementor, follow through, and organized. I am almost completely visionary, ideas, quick start, and scattered. We decided it was in our best interest to partner on every facet of our businesses.

It has been very interesting as we have dabbled in each other’s unique talents and abilities and the results that have come from that. We have spent the first few months becoming clear on our responsibilities and our roles together. I have been frustrated as I have spent time doing the things that he is good at and he has done likewise, we are getting better and better at working in our roles and responsibilities.

So I have learned that partnerships (in any way, shape, or form) take time to get clear, to get focused, and get productive. They are the most powerful things that I have done in my life thus far. Partnering with the best people I can associate with, building things way bigger than I could do alone.

Who can you partner with?

What relationships have we not formed yet that will alow us to accomplish our highest priorities?

Tate Denna has been a huge factor in my personal growth and accomplishment for the last few months specifically. We have both felt increased productivity and happiness since we have gotten clear on our partnership.

So a new idea has entered my life and it’s annoyingness (by that I mean it’s constant reocurence in the past few days) has prompted me to write about it. The idea is that your income will be in the same proximity as your 5 closest friends. In my mind this means that the company you keep has an economic value. The gap between the rich and the poor (as portrayed in the documentary ‘The One Percent’. See blog post on 22 Feb.) is widening. This has more to do with a natural tendency in life than a prevailing upper class cutting off the lower class.

Think back in your own life when a relationship was ‘costing’ you time or money? Or when being around someone was a draining. The growing ‘gap’ is a result of this idea. Your friends are those you see on a daily basis. For the rich, they are in rich meetings, rich events, and rich vacations, all the time associating with other rich people. If they were to associate with homeless people what would they talk about?  Their time is best spent buiding ideas and raising their own standard of living. How many success stories start with a young man or a poor man seeing a nice car or a big house and then commiting to becoming great? People have a tendency to look at rich people and decide how the rich should use their money.

It is funny to me that someone who makes, lets say $30k a year would criticize and condemn someone who makes $300k a year. The person who makes $30k has all these ways that the rich man should give to the poor. People are so generous with other peoples money. What person who makes $300k a year would follow the advice of someone who makes $30k a year? Obviously this could happen and does happen but if the $30k a year person’s ideas are so valuable than why aren’t they making the $300k themselves?

There are reasons why people do the things that they do. A good principle I follow is this: Assume other people have just as worthy motives/reasons as I do. People feel as strongly about their ideas and opinions as I do. How much time is spent trying to go against this principle? Complaining, convincing, and Condemning? Way too much I presume. More to come.