12
The Journey Is Better with Friends

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor.

ECCLESIASTES 4:9

After the surprise success of J. R. R. Tolkien’s children’s novel, The Hobbit, in the fall of 1937 his publisher asked him to write a sequel. The public, he wrote, will be “clamouring to hear more from you about Hobbits!” Tolkien had no plan for a follow-up at first. “I am a little perturbed,” he responded. “I cannot think of anything more to say about hobbits.” The issue might have ended there, but it didn’t. Tolkien mentioned that he had written more about Middle Earth, the imaginary world in which The Hobbit transpires. He offered to let his publisher read the material, even though it was missing the star attraction. “I should rather like an opinion, other than that of Mr. C. S. Lewis and my children, whether it has any value in itself . . . apart from hobbits.”

A cog was turning in Tolkien’s mind. For nearly two decades he’d hustled at uninteresting, sideline writing projects to make financial ends meet. But now, despite having no real plans for a sequel, he was imagining how he might pull it off. “I must confess that your letter has aroused in me a faint hope,” he continued. “I begin to wonder whether duty [the need for cash] and desire [his passion for the stories he loved] may not (perhaps) in future go more closely together.”1

You can hear it through the tentative language: Here at last was his big chance to tell stories he loved and simultaneously improve his family’s financial situation. Tolkien knew this was a life-changing opportunity. All he had to do was write another novel—preferably with more hobbits. Easy, right? It seemed so at first. By Christmas he finished the first chapter of the sequel. He was on his way! But then life happened.

Personal distractions, professional duties, and health crises seemed to pile up and prevent him from making any progress. Several times he gave up work on the project. “I have no idea what to do with it,” he admitted. Reading through his letters, you can spot a familiar zigzag pattern. He went back and forth between feeling confident and close to finishing, and running out of inspiration and energy to complete the project. At one point he said his “labour of delight” had been “transformed into a nightmare.”2

I say it’s familiar because we’ve all experienced something similar when we’ve pursued significant goals. Motivation and confidence undulate like waves. So how did Tolkien overcome the distractions and discouragement to finish The Lord of the Rings, one of the top-selling books of the twentieth century? The answer starts back at the beginning with Tolkien’s friend, C. S. Lewis. At several critical moments, Lewis encouraged Tolkien to stick with the project when he had given up. “Only by his support and friendship did I ever struggle to the end of the labour,” he said in 1954 as the first reviews began coming in.3 Over a decade later he still was quick to credit Lewis for his support:

The unpayable debt that I owe to him was . . . sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my “stuff” could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion.4

Tolkien had a mammoth goal, and he never would have seen it through without the help of his friend. Like it or not, we’re in the same boat.

Success Is Your Social Circle

We have a very powerful myth in our culture, the myth of the self-made man or woman. But let’s be honest. There’s no such thing.5 Success requires help—and usually lots of it. It’s impossible to discount the influence of our social circle. That’s why Solomon stressed friendships so much and so often. “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another,” he says in one place.6 He also warned about negative relationships: “Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man do not go, lest you learn his ways and set a snare for your soul.”7

Our peers matter. “Especially when it comes to self-improvement—like weight loss or overcoming an addiction—we need the energy of a community to stay with the program in a way that fuels us,” says psychologist Henry Cloud. “Research has shown that if you are in a community that is getting healthy or overcoming something difficult, your chances of success go way up. . . . Positive energy is contagious.”8

By being intentional on the front end, we can engineer that positive, viral energy into our best year ever. Usually we drift into peer groups. They could be associates from work, our kids’ school, church, whatever. The important thing to notice is how often these relationships just happen. They’re not intentional. But if iron sharpens iron, we should be careful about the kind of edge others are giving us. Instead of random relationships, we can create communities that help everyone involved achieve their goals together—like Lewis and Tolkien.

Nobody has the strength to do their life alone. Let’s be honest, it’s a two-person job at minimum. We stand a better chance of completing our goals when we work with others.

These intentional relationships are invaluable in at least four areas:

• Learning. Getting connected with a good group can accelerate your learning, provide key insights, help you find important resources, and teach you best practices.
• Encouragement. Whether it’s business, family life, or our faith journey, our goals can seem impossibly tough to reach. A good peer group can give you the validation and support you need to keep going and rise above the tempests.
• Accountability. We need people who can speak into our lives and help us when we’re veering off track. The right peers are essential for this.
• Competition. Recall from Step 1 that abundance thinkers are not threatened by competition and even tend to value it. Why? Social pressure is a real and often beneficial force for achieving our goals. University of Pennsylvania researchers compared four groups of people who worked out over ten weeks. In one group, individuals exercised alone. In another, they exercised with social support. In a third, people exercised competitively as individuals. In a fourth, they exercised competitively as teams. The last two groups were able to compare scores with other participants, while the first two were not. The results? The two competitive groups performed almost twice as well as the noncompetitive groups, even when the noncompetitive group had social support.9

And of course it’s not just about what you get. You can offer the same learning, encouragement, accountability, and competitive pressure to others in the group. That means you’ve got to share your goals selectively with the kind of people who can help you achieve them.

Note I said selectively.

Choose Your Circle Wisely

Honestly, I didn’t always believe this. I used to share my goals with anyone who would listen. In fact, I even posted them on my blog for the world to see. Then I heard Derek Sivers, the founder of CD Baby, speak at TED. “The repeated psychology tests have proven that telling someone your goal makes it less likely to happen,” he said.10 Why? Because your brain experiences the same sense of satisfaction as if you had actually accomplished it. It works against you. But I knew that couldn’t be the whole story, could it?

I went back to the work of Gail Matthews. According to her research, people who write down their goals and share them with supportive friends do better than those who keep them private. How are we supposed to reconcile these apparently contradictory views? Like this: We share our goals, but not with everyone. Instead, we share them selectively with supportive friends. People who understand the goal-setting process. People who are willing to hold us accountable. People who are willing to call us out when we’re making excuses. People who can encourage and energize us when we hit the messy middle.

The classic example for this is Alcoholics Anonymous. Charles Duhigg investigated the success of the organization for his book The Power of Habit. As I pointed out in Step 1, belief in the possibility of sobriety made the difference between success and failure. But that belief was made possible by the dynamic of the support group. “At some point, people in AA look around the room and think, if it worked for that guy, I guess it can work for me,” one researcher told Duhigg. “There’s something really powerful about groups and shared experiences.”11 Duhigg followed this line further, pointing to several examples where being “embedded in social groups” led to personal change and transformation. One woman compared joining a group to cracking the lid on Pandora’s box—in a good way. After joining the group and upgrading her outlook, there was no going back. “I could not tolerate the status quo any longer,” she said. “I had changed in my core.” Duhigg summarized his findings: “Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.”12

One of my 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever alumni, Scott, represents the power of our peers. After successfully reaching his goals, he said, “It’s been great to be able to do this with some friends who have walked alongside me and encouraged me along the way.” And the benefit was more than one-way. “I’ve been able to help them as well,” he said. Scott and his friends put together a shared goal sheet on Google and regularly check in with each other. “My greatest piece of advice is bring others in,” he said. “That’s been the most effective thing for me—to have others check on me and then others that I can hold accountable as well. It is absolutely worth it.”

The right peers serve as a support structure for our liberating truths. They help us retain our belief and commitment when we hit the messy middle. The main issue is the composition of the community and the beliefs it holds in common. If you surround yourself with scarcity thinkers, you’ll struggle to stay motivated in pursuit of your goals. If, on the other hand, you surround yourself with abundance thinkers, you’ll gain access to encouragement, emotional and material support, solutions, insights, and more. Ideas don’t just come out of the blue. They’re usually the product of conversations. When we’re around the right people, we make better, more useful connections between thoughts and generate fresh and innovative approaches to our challenges. As economist Enrico Moretti says, “Being around smart people tends to make us smarter, more creative, and ultimately more productive. And the smarter the people, the stronger the effect.”13

I started by mentioning Tolkien and Lewis. Other creative pairs demonstrate a similar dynamic. The relationship of Paul McCartney and John Lennon was sometimes competitive. Other times it was collaborative. But either way, they could not have accomplished what they did without each other.14

What Groups Work Best?

These peer groups can take different shapes and configurations depending on how intimate we desire them to be. Here are some examples of different groups that might work for you.

Online communities. I’m proud of the community my readers and podcast listeners have helped me build at MichaelHyatt.com. It’s a source of information and encouragement to thousands of high-achieving entrepreneurs and leaders, including me. The same is true for the private Facebook communities we’ve created for 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever and my productivity course, Free to Focus, as well as Platform University. The breakthroughs and transformations we see every week in the lives of the participants are compelling. Whatever your chosen goals, there are groups like this that can help you reach the finish line.

Running and exercise groups. You can tap into an existing community by joining an exercise class or running club. When I ran my first half marathon, I trained by myself. But the second and third times around I wanted the benefit of training with a group. My daughter Megan organized a team to run for a local charity. For four months leading up to the race, about thirty of us met every Saturday morning to run. Most every community has something similar. And if there isn’t one in your area, why not start it yourself?

Masterminds. These peer-to-peer coaching groups are a key way to learn best practices, get feedback on challenges, and hear how others have already crossed the hurdles you’re facing. These groups work best for sharing among people who are highly accomplished in their fields who feel comfortable sharing with others. I’ve participated in several over the years and experience massive gains toward my personal and professional goals.

Coaching or mentoring circles. Everyone needs a guide, preferably many. Mentors share their experience and maturity to counsel, inspire, and challenge us, whether in person or virtually. I belong to one group like this right now, as a participant. And I’ve led several mentoring groups over the years, bringing young professionals together to grow through some of life’s challenging and exciting moments. We recently launched groups like this for both 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever and Free to Focus. We gather to troubleshoot problems, learn new tools and frameworks, and challenge each other to grow and improve.

Reading or study groups. There is so much to learn about life, faith, family, and business that sometimes the best way is to get a group of people around a table and study a book on the topic together. The book gives the group a track to run on, and the right chemistry among the members can create conversations that go far beyond the book itself.

Accountability groups. There are very formal accountability groups like AA or the Samson Society,15 but they can be more informal as well, like Scott and his friends. The idea here is that members are invited to speak into each other’s lives, usually around a predefined set of struggles, to encourage and challenge when needed.

Close friendships. Nothing replaces good friendships. Lewis and Tolkien’s relationship went on for years, and even when it was strained, it remained beneficial to both. Without Tolkien’s knowledge, Lewis even recommended The Lord of the Rings to the Nobel Committee for its coveted prize in literature. It didn’t win, but that’s the kind of belief Lewis held in his friend’s work. I’ve found the same thing among my own friends. It’s easy to place work or family ahead of these sorts of relationships, but good friendships are like supports that hold up other areas of our life. And when a friend understands our dreams and goals, they can do more than most to support us when we struggle to stay motivated.

Don’t Miss Out

Intentional relationships make us more productive, creative, and useful than we could ever be on our own. If you’re like me, building these relationships can be a challenge. Professional and family demands can easily interfere with building and maintaining these sorts of groups, especially the more intimate and intensive ones. But if you’re hoping to experience your best year ever, don’t miss out! They can also benefit your professional and family lives in ways so big you may never be able to measure them.