No one roots for you when you're winning

“More internet strangers root for me than people I grew up with” - Alex Hormozi

This is probably one of the most painful lessons I ever learned in my life.

Painful in the sense that it’s a reality I refused to believe for the longest time.

When you start to get success in any form, whether it’s making more money, getting in better shape, improving your mental health.

You’re going to have people who say they’re happy for you but really aren’t.

I don’t think it’s because they’re bad people.

It’s just that you showed them it’s possible and now they have no excuse as to why they can’t do the same.

When I was in school I was the textbook definition of a loser.

I had bad grades, I didn’t play sports or join any after school clubs, and I also didn’t have many friends.

No one really expected anything of me, I was basically invisible.

But I grew up in similar situations as every other kid, I had the same opportunities they had to play sports, and go to college and basically do anything that everyone else could do.

I decided not to go to college and instead try this whole ‘business’ thing out.

It didn’t go right initially but I eventually started to see success.

As the years went by I saw everyone that I used to know from my hometown do the same things.

Graduate college, get a job they don’t really like, get married, and spend the rest of thier time drinking, doing drugs, and watching TV/playing video games.

And then there’s me. Who didn’t do any of that.

I’m not saying what they’re doing is wrong, to each their own.

But that could have never been me.

I saw what the future looked like if I followed the path everyone else was going and that scared me like nothing else.

I purposely put myself in a position of hardship in order to achieve a different result in life.

And that’s exactly what I got.

Nowadays I’ll have people I used to know from my hometown and school try to connect with me and say they’re ‘super happy’ for me and talk about how I’m doing all this cool stuff now.

But I know they don’t actually mean it, because I hear what they really say behind my back.

The truth is when you win, the people that grew up with you hate it.

Sure there’s gonna be some of them who genuinely care about you and want you to be successful, but we’re not talking about them right now. (you should never let these people go by the way).

When you achieve success, you remind the people in your hometown that they could have had what you have if they had stuck with the plan.

The truth is I’m not special, I’m not that smart, and I don’t have any crazy talents.

I had the same opportunities as everyone else in my hometown.

And they hate you because deep down they know that.

They are forced to question themselves and challenge internal beliefs.

They have to come to terms with the fact that they weren’t willing to put in the work and sacrifice like you did.

When you succeed you become living proof that someone from that small town can succeed.

They are now left with no excuses, and must look at their lives and realize that they could have done that too.

On the other hand, some of the most supportive friends I ever had were people I’ve only known in the last year or two.

They don’t come from the same town as me so they have no frame of reference.

And we probably get along so well because the same thing probably happened to them in their hometown.

The point of all of this is that if you’re trying to better yourself and your ‘friends’ are making fun of you for it, they’re not your friends.

They will always project the insecurities of their life on to you, they want you to be that person you used to be that would engage in bad habits with them, so that they could feel better about themselves.

When they say ‘you’ve changed’ your response should be ‘yeah, and you haven’t’.

I know it’s tough out there but I promise there are plenty of people who genuinely want to see you win and improve yourself.

Because I’m one of them.

And I’m always going to root for you.

Check out the video I made on this topic here:
https://youtu.be/MfFB83G04qk?si=1u_OJIZat4RQ74_S