You Will Lose Friends to Success (And That’s Okay)

I just received an interesting question from a customer of my flagship online business guide The Art of X. I say interesting because unlike most questions which are about X growth or monetization, this one is about his personal life.

The original email is extremely long so the short version is:

He was making $4000 a month from his job. He bought my guide early in 2024 and is now consistently making $5000 a month from his X account. He never let his lifestyle inflate despite doubling his income because his eventual goal was to quit his job (he still has a flatmate).

And 2 months ago, he quit his job to focus exclusively on online business. This freed up his entire day because he no longer needs to be somewhere 9-5 and he doesn’t need to dress up for work and commute an hour one way to get there.

He says that he was on great terms with his flatmate earlier and they would chill together, but now that he is a free man, his flatmate seems to dislike him and has become increasingly hostile to him.

Ok, listen up boys, because if you’re going to build your own reality, you need to hear this:

Most people are slaves of society.

They are taught to be obedient and follow “the system” from a young age.

They are taught that if they want to be successful and accepted by society, they must get student loans to get a degree, they must get a job, they must buy a house and a car, and they must marry a normal woman.

They are brainwashed to believe that by following “the system”, they are being “responsible” and smart.

People grow up being told that if they start a business, they are taking on “risk”. If they date many women casually, they are doing something “bad”. If they take TRT to fix your body, they are “cheating”.

I call them slavish because they live a life of least resistance. They make their life choices from a narrow range of socially acceptable choices and end up with roughly the same shitty ass life.

In essence, their slave reality is all about sacrificing themselves in the service of society and women. They think by being “responsible” and “useful”, they are becoming a man (The idiotic “man = provider” mindset).

On the other hand, you are creating your own reality where you are beholden to no one. Funny when they say society owes you nothing, they always omit out that you owe society nothing as well.

By creating your own reality, you are giving the finger because you owe nobody a damn thing and don’t need to sacrifice yourself to benefit anyone (corporation slavery, serving women’s interests, paying your taxes to governments, etc.) else but yourself.

By creating your own free reality, you piss off the slaves.

By building an online business, you have started the process of creating your own reality.

You begin to get the first taste of freedom and what life is like outside slave reality.

In slave reality, you wake up to an alarm clock.

In your reality, you wake up when you want to wake up. Alarm clocks are optional and you can use them to correct your schedule, but you do not *need* them.

In slave reality, you wear what your corporation asks you to wear, you tailor your words to fit the sensibilities of the bimbos in HR, and you beg your boss for a day off if you need to do something else.

In your reality, you wear what you want, you speak what you want, and if you want a day off, you just take it.

In slave reality, you are supposed to be working in the afternoon with the other slaves at your workplace.

In your reality, you hit the gym in the afternoon and work whenever you want.

Going back to the original question the TAOX customer asked – You are living in the reality you created while your flatmate is stuck in the slave world. Of course the poor bastard hates you.

Deep down, you are everything he wants to be. He did everything right. He was “responsible”. He works hard, he pays his student loans, he got himself a job, and yet his life is shit compared to yours.

The truth is that you will lose many “friends” when you improve yourself and create your own reality.

They will hate you, but their hatred stems not from anything you did but from the frustration that they are not free despite following the rules and doing what they were told.

There is nothing you can do about this except to upgrade your social circle and find other winners to be around.

You will never convince a slave who is envious of your lifestyle to like you. At best they will pretend to like you while sabotaging you behind your back.

This is the cold hard truth about life.

No one likes to see someone they consider below them (or roughly equal to them) do much better than them.

Them and their mother hate it when you are suddenly living much better than them. They are trying their best to drag you back to “your place”.

There is NOTHING you can do to change this. It is entirely an emotional reaction they have inside their heads.

As you become freer and more successful, your social circle and phone contact list necessarily has to change.

It upgrades because better people are added (your access increases) and guys who are at the bottom drop out (either they hate you or you have no incentive to be around them).

Life Advice: MINIMIZE JEALOUSY.

One big tip I can give anyone who’s improving their lot in life is to take active steps to minimize creating jealousy and envy in the hearts of people who are around you.

NOTHING good comes from making other people jealous. NOTHING.

It only makes them want to find ways to hurt and damage your interests.

Going out of your way to make people jealous is low social skills behavior. It’s how low class people behave when they get their hands on some money (and they all lose it quickly for a reason).

Blend in with people around you at least on a superficial level.

This means things like:

• No flashy watches
• No luxury cars (a cheap car you can easily afford is far better anyway)
• No posting photos of your amazing lifestyle on Instagram for everyone to see
• No telling people how much money you make (NOTHING good comes out of this).
• Do not talk about cryptocurrency in public (If you’ve already made this mistake, tell them you sold it all in the crash)

You don’t have to act broke but you shouldn’t be rubbing your money and lifestyle in average people’s faces. When you’re around people of a certain caliber, you can wear whatever watch you want and talk about whatever topics you like.

With average people who live the average life, don’t make your success your own enemy by getting them to hate you. They can’t help it. Envy is a part of human nature.

Even if they don’t envy you (rare), they will still waste your time when they learn that you are highly successful.

This means things like asking you 2000 questions they could have asked ChatGPT (and never taking any action) to asking about your business and trying to copy it (some businesses are very easy to copy and you should keep your mouth shut about them) to just asking you for a loan you both know is never going to be repaid.

The relationship will only go in one direction because while they can get a lot from you, there is nothing they have that you will ever need (their advice, contacts, etc. are worthless for you). So essentially the ROI from building this relationship would be negative in the first place.

Not showing off will be harder to do if you’re in your 20s because the need to show everyone how awesome you are is maximum from age 10 to 25 (brain not fully developed and strong need for ego gratification). It is childish behaviour.

When was the last time you got something out of one-upping everyone? It never happens.

The long term solution is simply improving your social circle and the places you to go. You can express yourself more when the people around you are also doing well.

This is why you see rich people pay a huge premium for exclusive spaces like ultra high end hotels and gyms.

They don’t do it for the facilities, they do it so they are only surrounded by people above a certain level. The price is a filter to keep the masses out.

Hope that helps.

Your man,

Harsh Strongman