Each of us has those people (it’s usually a small number of people) who actively challenge us to grow. The people we think of when we’re in a tough situation and need advice, or when we have a big life decision and need to hash out all the options with someone.
These are not the people who support us no matter what. We certainly need those people as well, but the people I’m talking about are the ones who won’t let us get away with mediocrity, who call “bullshit” when we only go halfway. The ones who challenge us to do better, because they know we can.
These are the people whose opinions of us really matter. Not because we need to impress them or win their approval, but because they know us deeply and believe in us to the point where they won’t coddle us in order to preserve our feelings. We can trust these people and their reactions to our work, because being nice isn’t the top priority for them.
For a long time, I implicitly believed that this select group had to agree with my own ideologies. I thought that, in order to trust someone in this way, we had to have a baseline set of beliefs in common—political, spiritual, philosophical.
I recently realized that this thinking is flawed. Some of the people I trust to challenge me the most are actually those who disagree with me on a fundamental level.
The unifying factor, then, is mutual respect. The friend who is staunchly opposed to my ideology, and who listens and questions and challenges with respect, is priceless. The diversity of perspectives inspires new ways of thinking that I wouldn’t have considered if I were in an echo chamber of my own beliefs.
(Photo by Joshua Ness on Unsplash)