Inner Circle
Your people; those with unrestricted access to your attention in assigned communities.
The people in your inner circle will come from your favorite mentors, peers, and students in your various communities. Think about that. Every one of your communities should have a mentor, a peer, and a student. Pick your favorites. Now pick favorites again. Keep picking until you have a group of people you are devoted to and love unconditionally.
Personal caveat: you shouldn’t have many mentors in your inner circle at any given time. You can have many, just not at once.
You’re going to love everyone in your inner circle deeply. While you may balk at that idea, remember that most of your interactions with people are for a limited scope and time. You’re probably not discussing your personal life with a cashier, but justice requires you to treat everyone the same. Thus, your inner circle are the people you routinely give love and support to while expecting the same in return. If you’re expecting the cashier to check in on you everytime you see them, you need better friends. Or a better therapist.
First, this love isn’t the attraction or desire to be intimate with someone. This is when you get enjoyment out of doing things that lessen others’ burdens. Remember, any kind of love is an unselfish act - never words. I’m not telling you to forget the practice of routinely telling people you love them, but I’m simply pointing out an act of love must be in the form of real effort given to another for their benefit, never for your own causes or priorities. I’m also purposely trying to make this duty sound much more than what it ends up looking like. Feed and educate a child, surely love. Pay a child’s tuition, a certain act of love. Hug a spouse, an act of love. Let someone merge in front of you in traffic, that’s a push of love through your foot on the brake pedal to restrain your own progress. Lessening someone’s burden is the ultimate act of love, but it’s also quite easy and you’re probably not seeing clearly how your actions are affecting others in a positive way. First, take stock of how much love you’re giving and how many different people you are giving it to. If you’re a heterosexual man, this concept may be especially hard for you to grasp. It was for me. But this is a very simple idea when you realize that anytime you move your body to help lessen another’s burden, you’re serving them. That’s love, fool. Don’t let your ego think that is ever a bad thing.
This is important. Your inner circle shouldn’t be limited to a few people. It should be as large as possible. If justice requires you to act the same in every scene, why would you treat your spouse or child any differently than a customer service representative? People in your inner circle do not need to be in close proximity to you, but you need to be in communication with them. Similarly, no one can be in your inner circle if you don’t want them there; it’s not about physical proximity or who you live with, it’s who you want to serve. Friends, family, colleagues, members of the public you regularly interact with, and anyone you get intimate with should expect reciprocal support, equal effort in communicating with each other, and mutual enforcement against lies and false impressions. The only added layer for intimate and romantic partners should be interactive, physical vulnerability.
As touched on earlier, your inner circle should have individuals you set the example for, peers to practice with and compare your skills to, and mentors to learn from. For most adults, mentor roles are filled by parents, bosses, coaches, or religious leaders; while peers are co-workers, friends, family, and the public; and then students end up being our children, subordinates, and younger generations. Mentors, peers, and students don’t need to be people you know, or even be alive. Here’s a secret I’ve learned, the healthiest of inner circles aren’t set in stone and they contain a balanced mix of great, good, average, poor, and even some evil characters. That’s because we’re all capable of being any of those things at any moment. If you remain in pursuit of excellence yourself, you’ll bring people up to your level. You’ll need many people on your level to practice life with as you pursue your version of excellence. Those are your peers, but don’t ever compare your efforts to theirs. Your efforts should be compared to your mentors. Mentors need to maintain their high perspective because that’s where they have to be in order to call themselves a mentor. They haven’t earned it as much as they’ve just been alive longer than you have. Thus, they’ve had the time to experience more people and more scenarios to understand life is nothing more than a series of laws. Good mentors will help you understand the current laws of your existence and offer creative solutions to overcome obstacles. Find mentors who have seen some stuff. Their perspective is where they can clearly see how you’re spinning in circles and how you simply need a change of scenery for you to see where your crazy wild path has taken you and where you should go instead. Don’t worry if you feel like you haven’t found any good mentors yet. These folks have been much more abundant than you’re probably recognizing. On the river of life, they’re everyone ahead of you. Just whistle and they’ll offer a helping hand the same way you always do when those behind you ask for help.
Finding a mentor is as easy as finding someone who did what you want to do, in a good way. Then you follow their example. You’ve been doing it all your life and you can prove that by listing the skills you have and who you learned them from. No matter if you think the person was good or evil, they did their job in fulfilling their role in teaching you a skill. Take the skill, leave the person. How many good skills do you have? You have at least that many past mentors. Now the question is how many new skills do you want? You need at least that many new mentors. I mentioned at the top that you needed to judge mentors’ credibility. You do that by paying attention to your intuition when you receive their impressions. If you don’t get the sense they know what they’re talking about, it’s probably going to be in the movements of their body, not their words. Their lack of confidence in their answers will start to show through their hands, eyelids, lips, jaw, and specific movements with their body. The story of Pinochio is 100% when you take into account our bodies change when we lie. As a recovered pathological liar, I can tell you from first hand experience, when people lie, they die in questions. When something doesn’t make sense, ask! When you still don’t get it, ask again. If they’re not willing to be patient enough to explain it, they’re either lying or you need to move on to a new mentor. Mentors need to teach you and if they’re not giving you answers you understand, it’s your obligation to find a new one.
Just like mentors, peers can be both real or imaginary. That said, you better have at least one real friend you see regularly. If for anything, to make sure you’re cleaning yourself. You’d be surprised how many stories exist of geniuses emerging from stretches of work smelling like mushroom soup. I’m serious. Check in with people so we can make sure you’re staying normalish. People get weird when they do life on their own without interacting with others.
Students can be anyone you engage with directly or future generations you reach through impressions. The way you pass on your knowledge or experience to them can be in person or through video, art, expression, or this: words on a page.
Your inner circle is not distinguished by the quality of love or support you give to them over the ones outside it, but only by the number of minutes spent interacting with them, either in person or in thought. If you’re walking constantly thinking about Taylor Swift, you’ve put her in your inner circle. Is it reciprocal? Probably not. The only reason people should not be in your inner circle is because they are actively attempting to harm you, you haven’t met them yet, or you simply don’t interact with them enough for them to be aware of the current iteration of you. Most people are not friends with the people they were friends with in the past because as people explore and discover their inclinations, they tend to gravitate towards specific communities for their social interactions. Thus, what are your flavors of life and things you tend to be attracted to over others? Those people should be your friends. Of course, geography and inclination helps a lot, but no matter where or who you’re around, remember you get to choose who is in your inner circle.
The people you are around the most can be in your inner circle, if you choose to let them interact with you. But if you have a different aim and don’t want to interact with them, kindly decline the interaction and focus on your objective. If they take umbrage, who’s at fault? Certainly not you for remaining unselfishly focused on your purpose. When you are voluntarily interacting with people, which you must do every day inside civilization, recognize you’re letting them in your inner circle when you communicate with them. Moral of this section of the story: be nice to everyone always. Capiche?
For bullies and people with true narcissist personality disorder, those who don’t show actions and products of correcting their character, run fast and run far. Never fight back unless you are trying to protect your life or someone else’s. With words or actions, don’t fight them; just run away as fast as you can and move on with your life. Otherwise, you are doing what they want you to do: engaging. Ten percent of humans are bad and have no hope of ever changing unless they come across a patient teacher with a good message. My fake numbers, not science. But still, that’s a problem for them to solve inside their story. Always disengage from the ten percent and stay away forever. Your story needs a solution too and when it comes to solving the problems of how to break free of bullies and narcissists, it’s going to be running away every time. When you want to think it’s a different solution, check to see what’s driving the justification and you’re going to find it’s your ego and it needs to be shut down. It should be your aim to interact with every human as if they were in your inner circle. Of course, that is impossible, but it’s the mindset we’re after. Then it becomes your job to set boundaries for those that cannot provide you with good interactions and provide them with nothing but pity instead of responding with emotions. Again, impossible most of the time, but we’re doing better than we were last time if we remain aware of our faults.
This is important. If you can’t help people in your inner circle, get them help. If they won’t take the help, run. Look, I know what you’re going to say. But if I’m ever going to get the good that is inside of you out to give it to all of us, I need you to stop giving it to so few. Do you see how there’s an argument in there that you’re being selfish by waiting for someone in your inner circle to change? When you do, you are not able to cultivate the good inside of you so it can benefit all of us. Your good can never benefit only one or a few. I’m telling you now and always, turn your back and run. If you need support or motivation, go search out all the many, many people who have been in your shoes and read their playbook. But remember, it’s not your job to do that for them. The same way you have to work on you, they have to work on them. Their life is their chance to find a way to give their good. I know you see their good and want to help them get it out, but if they won’t do the work at your suggestion, it's going to take someone with not only more education and experience, but someone detached from both of you. But where does that leave you and your life? You need to live for us by living better for you. They’ll figure it out or they won’t.
This next bit is going to be difficult for a lot of you, especially folks I’ve met with an apologetic, midwestern attitude. When you receive false factual impressions from someone in your inner circle, you have an obligation to correct them. Leave them to their opinions always. It sounds odd to say this after making that statement, but solicit opinions often! They’re really where the fun of life can be had while also learning a great deal about your friends and life. Most important, always fact check opinions before considering adopting them.
When you receive criticism, you have a duty to judge it before accepting or denying it. Give weight and preference to those who give feedback in the form of examples of their own actions rather than those of others. When the criticism is hearsay but true, take the message and leave its author. Good messages are universal in logic, but we all know speakers who get lucky with word combinations every now and then even though they might entirely miss the context of implementing good.
As issues arise in a relationship, you have a duty to address it as soon as possible with honest and direct communication. The aim is to never allow ego to exist anywhere in your inner circle. When it does, don’t criticize them beyond pointing out that it appears their ego may be involved. When your ego shows up, beat it down with humble apologies and admit your ego and emotions were a driving force behind your actions. Then write about it and ask why until you know what happened.
It can be hard to admit, but the quality of your life is only as good as the quality of your inner circle, and never the quantity. Choose them very carefully.
You may not have a choice if they stay, but you always have a say if they are welcome.
