The world is filled with many different types of people who all see things in different way. Additionally we have people around us who understand us and the things we do as well as people who don’t get us. We also have people who trust our judgement and support us, then there are people who don’t support us. Unfortunately there are also people you just can’t trust and who will deliberately give you bad advice, discourage you, sabotage your efforts or set you up to fail. Sadly, sometimes even the people who are on our side can inadvertently cause us problems further down the line by not being fully honest and open with their opinions or by trying to spare our feelings or by trying to be good friends.
What we have to understand is that humans are very complex in terms of relationships. Sometimes if you try and reach for the stars, you’ll alienate those people around you who are giving you support today. Sadly todays friend can be tomorrows enemy.
Similarly sometimes you’ll find yourself disliking someone or something simply because it’s in a different realm to yours. Maybe they’re in the same field but at a higher status than you so you have all these reasons why you don’t like them, but then when your status elevates to their level, you realize they were exactly the same as you all along.
The kinds of people that support you and are happy for you, whether you’re rich or poor, for better for worse, are few and far between. These are the people who might insult your work, but at the end of the day you know they know what they’re talking about, and they’re doing it for your benefit. These are people you would give your last dollar to because you know they would do the same for you.
Which brings me to my point.
When I’m about to undertake a new personal project, something that has worked for me is not telling anyone anything about what I’m doing unless it’s absolutely necessary or unavoidable.
When I have a new idea and I’m tingling with excitement about it, I find I can get a lot more mileage out of my initial motivation if I don’t tell anyone about it. I just don’t like hearing all the ways it won’t work, and I don’t like explaining an unfinished idea over and over again. I prefer it to be done, or as close to completion as possible, then I let people know about it.
The only exception is perhaps telling the kind of people I outlined above, the ones that have got your back- and even then, I’d only tell them when I’m around the 80% complete mark.
Having a support structure is great, and with many endeavours it really is necessary to know there are people looking out for you when your back is against the wall. But sometimes it can be like riding a bike with stabilizers, it’s a little too safe. You can project can quickly become about what other people think and their reaction to your endeavour rather than staying true to your original vision.
It’s not a hard and fast rule, but sometimes signing a non-disclosure agreement with yourself is the best thing you can do.
