Signs Your Friend Is Trying To Undermine Your Success

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You’d like to believe that a true friend would want you to succeed, and would be happy for you if she saw you coming up in the world. But it’s interesting how major life changes—from career success to marriage to divorce to even health issues—can reveal the true weaknesses of some of our friendships. Often, we don’t realize just how fragile a friendship really was until something big changes in our lives. Some friendships can only survive so long as everything stays the same. That, of course, isn’t a great friendship because life is full of changes, and one of those—if you’re lucky, and work hard—is career success.

Career success can have a particularly interesting effect on a friend group. I know that I, personally, lost some friends when I found my ambition. In my early working years, when I was struggling and we were all failing and fumbling around, I took great comfort in these friends. They were the first ones to offer me a drink and help me laugh it off when something bad happened at work. What I didn’t realize was that they wanted things to stay that way. Maybe due to their own feelings of insecurity or inadequacy, they believed that we would all, forever, be struggling. And they at least took comfort in the company.

So, the moment things started going well for me, some of those friends with whom I commiserated went mysteriously MIA. I quickly realized that, they weren’t trying to lift me up by being there for me when I was down. They just assumed we’d all stay down—forever. If friends don’t want you to succeed, some may even do little things to undermine your success. They may not even do it consciously, but if they aren’t chasing their own dreams, then watching you chase yours can bring out some strange and subconscious behaviors in them. Here are signs your friend is trying to undermine your success.

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She praises your competitors

She often talks about how well your competition is doing, showing you articles and videos of their work, and sharing with you all the publicity they’re getting. While you do follow the competition and think it’s important to know what they’re up to, it seems a bit strange that your self-proclaimed friend would bring this to your attention as often as she does.