Personal growth: why you are losing friends

The journey towards personal growth is not easy. You may lose some of your friends along the way. Wondering why? Here are some reasons for losing friends along the path of personal growth and development.

1. Passion of self-growth

When you start a personal growth journey, your focus and ultimately your entire energy, ambitions, and feelings change. This makes for a huge life adjustment and naturally it has huge effects in your life. It’s not that easy what you think. It’s all about transforming yourself into a new person through a lot of positive changes in you. 

In this whole process, you often forget to connect with your friends and family. At the end when you are able to do what you always wanted to do, you know that you have sacrificed your friends and family in some cases due to lack of time and communication. This may make it a lonely journey.

2. Personal Conflicts

Sometimes in your entire process of personal growth, you change almost completely and try hard to make a new impression on everyone through positive transformations. Sometimes your new personality doesn’t match with your friends and they can’t put you as you are now. 

You or either they don’t feel comfortable and understand your struggles toward this journey. This is the biggest reason in this path you continue losing your friends.  Sadly, conversations with loved ones also feel awkward. It seems impossible to find a deep and satisfying connection anymore. 

3. Replacing your old friends 

Many of our old friends are simply friends because we went to school with them or grew up around them. These friendships were born out of convenience, not necessarily by choice. Many friends and even family are no longer an energetic match for you. Though it may have some good long-term effects but at first it feels so bad to lose your close old friends at that time. 

Loyalty can also keep us stuck with the wrong people for too long. Loyalty can seem like such an admirable quality, but it can often be blind and misguided. Just because someone has been in your life for a long time doesn’t give them permanent placement for life — especially if it no longer feels good!

4. Growth is somehow a lonely path 

Most of you live with the belief that when you’re on the right path, the world will rise to meet you and give more chances. And there’s certainly some truth to it. But that doesn’t mean periods of loneliness and self-doubt don’t come along with it. You don’t have to be happy about letting go. It’s okay to grieve what you’re leaving behind. It’s okay to be sad as you say goodbye to people, to places, to situations that no longer suit you. 

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5. Negative Reactions from friends and family

As you continue your growth journey, you may experience negative reactions from loved ones and friends. You as an individual live in a state of fear. Stagnation often sees those on a path to growth as intimidating. 

Perhaps you’ve decided to start a business and are growing and succeeding in new and exciting ways, but your family and friends don’t seem to like it. You may be disregarded by those who you thought were real friends. The more you work on yourself, the more you will start feeling as if the world is working against you.

6. Path of growth is not an easy one

There’s nothing easy about walking down the path of personal growth which is about letting go of others, reaction, isolation. It’s hard but nothing is permanent. It’s a process. If you trust in life, you’ll find the right people, places and things will flow toward you naturally, with perfect timing. 

7. Jealousy Factors 

When you experience personal growth & transformation, some of your friends & family may become uncomfortable with your success. Some may even unconsciously resent it. This is because your progress can serve as a reminder to them that they are avoiding growth in their own lives. 

It needs to be remembered that this should not be a deterrent to keep progressing. Difference in priorities & values may cause some old relationships to fall apart. The length of time you’ve been friends with someone does not necessarily equate with the strength of your friendship with that person today. What’s important is how the relationship makes you feel right now.

How to deal with friends who don’t understand your new growth?

• As already discussed above many characteristics such as personality conflicts, lack of time, your new transformative habits etc. impact the nature of your relationship with your family and friends. Sometimes they understand your struggles towards your personal growth and misinterpret you and sometimes it’s difficult for you to find and understand their true intentions towards you. Personal growth is often uncomfortable, messy, and full of feelings you weren’t expecting. But it’s necessary. Here what you must do so that you don’t have to lose your friends in this journey. Here are some of the tips that share how to deal with such friends at the end. Afterall, it should not impact your relations.
• First, choose to grow with them and make a point of sharing your experiences and lessons learned with them. Share your feelings and experiences along the way. Who knows, your friendship could blossom even more. This will help on both sides of the relationship.
• Always remember in this journey of personal growth, Your friends, family and other people are not your competition. Your competition is adjournment, your ego, the knowledge you are neglecting, the negative behavior you are nurturing and lack of creativity. You need to fight with these instead of the people.
• In this journey, you think that you are doing right in the spark of your ambitions and achieving the goals. Sometimes you can’t understand the viewpoints of your friends and family.  Listen with an open mind and heart, hear their side of things for better relations in friendship.
• Your friend might not like your new transformation. Maybe they’re jealous, maybe they just aren’t sympathetic or compliant. If this is the case, it may be time to move on, unfortunately. This often happens when people change dramatically; you may outgrow relationships and need to find new ones that help you to flourish instead of opposing it to hold you back. It’s a natural part of change but it can be shocking and sad. Just know that if this happens, it’s meant to be, and you will find better, more supportive friends for the new you. Make the effort to include your friend but if they’re just not having it or being constantly negative, it’s time to move on.

It has always been observed that personal growth doesn’t just affect us. It can affect the dynamics of relationships with partners, friends, family, and co-workers. Humans are social beings and can’t live in an isolated jail. 

Your behavior and actions affect others especially the people you are closest to. Try to make an effort to keep the good friends around by being open, honest, and authentic with them about your growth journey and allowing them to contribute where they can for powerful results. It might just prevent you from  losing friends. If you need professional assistance in your personal growth journey, you can always reach out to me or read the 10 easy tips to turn your purpose into reality! I look forward to hearing from you.