The Power of Learning from DAD

Lesson 12 – Friends – Part 1

When we are talking about friends here, we are talking about a relationship that can exist between individuals, organisations, communities or countries. Friendships are critical to success creation because success is often collaborative. In other words, wherever productive relationships exist, success can be created.

If the right friendship groups can create success, then the wrong ones can scupper or undo success. When we are thinking of friendship therefore in the context of success creation, there are three things to bear in mind:

• Make a conscious choice about who will be your friends
• Choose friends that you can learn from
• Choose friends who will support and challenge you in times of need and in times of plenty

When friends, be they individuals or organisations are chosen wisely, they can be a source of great personal power. Your friendship group becomes a source of power when they are able to expand and help you to intelligently direct your knowledge, knowledge that can then be organised in efforts to achieve your goals.

In summary: Choose friends that can expand your knowledge, challenge your assumptions and support you to achieve your goals. This strong network of positive influence will enable you to increase your success rate exponentially.

Lesson 12 – Friends – Part 2

In the previous video we talked about gaining power through our friendship groups. Here we elaborate of this point. Specifically, we said that our friendship groups, when intelligently and intentionally chosen, are a source of personal power. Napoleon Hill described this point eloquently.

In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill wrote that success is easily created through “the coordination of knowledge and effort in the spirit of harmony between two or more people in the attainment of a definite purpose” What is meant here is that when you work with friends who are able to expand your knowledge, in a spirit of harmony, you have available to you more skills, more ideas, more expertise and more experience through which you can actively achieve you goal. If this collective group is called upon to apply their expertise to the achievement of your goals, your chances of success compound.

Expanding on the power of your friendship group, Hill introduced the concept of a mastermind. He wrote: “No two minds ever come together without, thereby, creating a third, invisible, intangible force which may be likened to a third mind.” The concept of a mastermind gives us the real reason why friendship groups are a source of great power. When two people come together, the synthesis of ideas creates more than the sum of its parts. How does this work?

There is energy involved in thinking. Our brain may be compared to an electronic battery. It is a well-known fact that a group of batteries will produce disproportionally more energy than a single battery; similarly a group of minds creates disproportionately more thought energy than an individual brain. Through this metaphor it becomes immediately apparent that friendship groups are powerful. In utilising friendship groups we generate more thought energy working on our goal, which exponentially increases our chances of success. We can think of this as being like the difference in power generated by one battery as opposed to that generated by multiple batteries.

In summary: it is important to consciously and intentionally choose the right friendship groups. When you have people around you who are equally passionate about what you want to achieve, and who can add to your store of knowledge, they will stimulate your ideas. These individuals will not give you the answers, however through their input you can formulate new ideas and take new actions. A final point to make: while we have focused on goal attainment and personal power, economics without a balanced life has no value. We must therefore acknowledge in closing the huge role that friendship plays as a source of joy, enabling us to play, to learn and to grow.