How to make friends in high places (or just friends)

This post is a STATEMENT and a VOW of COMMITMENT to try and change the WORLD (and Steemit) and help fellow steemians find friends and have more success in life in general. I will decline rewards from this post for a simple reason: “You can’t buy friends with money”, this applies to many other things as well, there are many things worth far more than money. I’m from Cuba, and my monthly salary is 50 dollars, with an occasional 20 dollar bonus, after paying for bills I usually have left about 20 -30 dollars to live for a month; think of how much it can affect me to reject the potential rewards of this post, and I hope that by the end of the post you’ll understand why I decided to do it. This will be a very long post posting a philosophy and way of living that I hope helps you as much as it has helped me to find some happiness in this unfair world we live in. 

Put yourself in your interlocutor’s shoes

Really, next time you try to talk with a whale, a dolphin, a CEO or your neighbor, try to look at things through their eyes, let me give a few examples: 

1. President of a country (President Trumps for example). Imagine how it feels waking up each morning and getting tons of complaints from everyone for all the problems you didn’t cause and you can’t solve. You go to the white house, talk with all the ministers and everyone says: “Nah, we got some small issues but don’t worry, we’ll take care of them, go spend some time with your family…” yeah, right, like if that ever happened anywhere… Instead people starts shouting complains and asks you for a magical solution that requires ZERO work, ZERO effort but solves every simple problem, and of course, everyone's problem is the most important of all so they compete for attention and ignore each other. 
2. Whales. I don’t have access to the users of the whales here in steemit, but I can imagine not many people say: “Hey mister whale, thanks for working you ass off supporting this site, I’ll work hard to make it better so we can all enjoy it” and instead ask for money or support without giving anything in exchange. Let’s face it, 99% of the whales aren’t spoiled teenagers that got their millions out of nowhere, all of them had to work their ass off, and how many people recognize and appreciate their work?, without their support there won’t be a Steemit in the future, so why don’t we stop expecting more help from them and instead thank them for the help they’ve already given?. There are many good whales out there, but many of them are just disappointed.
3. CEO of international companies.                                                      Next time you see one of them in the TV, don’t look at their car or all the millions they’ve got, instead think of all the things they need to do for their employees. Imagine managing 10000 employees divided across multiple countries… cultural differences, economic differences, social differences, political differences, and they’ve got to deal with ALL of that, while also making the company profitable (now you know why most of them have white hair or are bald) Wow, suddenly being all mighty and powerful doesn’t sound too good? Everyone has problems, even those in the top, and these people have a lot of pressure on them, because a single decision could change many lives or even the world. These people need to handle a lot of stress, fear and doubts, so next time you see your boss, give him thanks for handling all those nasty meetings and bureaucratic issues, and who knows? He might invite you to a drink next time. 

Be sincere, and a true friend

Again, today’s world is pretty crazy, so much stuff going on and we can barely keep up, right? Imagine those with higher ranks, power and a lot of expectations on their shoulders… they’re at least 10000 times more busy, (I just saw my boss with two phone calls at the same time and three people at the door). Now, when someone just Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V a generic message everywhere looking for attention; would you pay attention to that person?, there is a high chance you won’t, and instead pay attention to those persons whose feelings are imprinted in their messages. If we can’t spend time paying attention to those who aren’t sincere or don’t care about us, how can those whales who have even less time pay attention…? 

We’ve seen movies or heard of people who got hired against all expectations because they were sincere, original and hardworking people, they didn’t send the same resume everywhere, they stuck to their beliefs and persisted, they expressed their feelings and desires, and those feelings and desires were heard. I’ve met people from all around the world, many of them have quite some degree of importance, and in every case I’ve treated them the same, as friends, using emojis, giving suggestions and rejecting ideas. Let me give an example of a trader friend of mine, he’s got at least 10000 times the money I have and is at least 1000000 more times important, and he once posted an idea about a position. I went and told him (politely of course) that I disagreed with him and the reasons why I did so, everyone else was just praising him and asking for more. Guess what, after talking with me for a while he decided that indeed it was risky and changed the position, we later spoke and he told me I had saved him from a bad trade, “You helped me dodge that bullet”, he said. I’m sure he appreciated my sincerity going against the pack and giving an unbiased opinion, now we talk regularly about our ideas and help each other. 

Treating them as friends also includes your attitude… I want to share with my friends the best of me, my very best ideas, and my very best moments, if I barely have free time every day, why should I expect my friends to have any more free time than I?, I don’t like taking their time for every single little thing I do and instead I want to share with them my most extreme feelings, those feelings of joy you NEED to share with your friends so they enjoy too and those moments of despair when you NEED emotional support, treat your followers as your friends and not as some numbers in a screen or on a sheet. I want my friends to know they’re important to me, that they can visit my house anytime they want and no matter what happens I’ll be there to listen and help however I can. If you treat people as friends, people will eventually treat you as a friend too.

Be grateful for what you have instead of raising your expectations

This is a philosophy of life, one that I learned due to all the hardships I’ve gone through… I’m very poor (and there are people even poorer than me), I suffered bullying during all the high school and junior high, I considered suicide many times, I cried in despair, punched walls, got beaten up and saw the extent of my impotence… At the end of everything I was almost a broken shell… remembering those moments literally make me cry (T.T, if this were a letter there would be tears all over the place), that’s a trauma I’ll never forget, an irreplaceable part of me. In those moments of utter despair a single hand was stretched to me, a girl whose name sadly I cannot even remember, this girl was so great to me and helped me get out from that hell, but I fell under social pressure and my own immature weakness and told her horrible things, and even as I said all those horrible things she smiled and said: “I’m glad you’re back with your friends, to where you belong”, I wish I could go back in time and punch myself in the face several times, that farewell is the only regret I have in my life, and there is literally nothing I can do, and all I’ve ever wanted is to see her and say: “I’m sorry for being such an asshole”. 

Even so, her smiling face sparked something inside me, and the next time I was depressed in a corner, I felt something "warm" inside (I’m crying again BTW), I felt gratitude, pure gratitude, and then I closed my eyes and thought of my parents who had raised me without any complaint, even though none of us is never ready to be a parent, I thought of how I was able to live in a house instead of being abandoned at birth, I thought in all the wonderful people I had meet and all the things they had taught me, and the kind of person I had been… and then I smiled, even with all my despair I smiled from the bottom of my heart and swore to myself I would change, I would be honest, I would thank others for all they’ve done, I would thank the world for letting me exist in this era where I can meet so many wonderful people and learn so many things (How many of us would have survived in the colosseum?). By changing inside and adopting this philosophy of gratitude, my world has become so brighter, so much brighter... and people notice that as well. 

Try to compliment someone for their hard work next time… compliment your girlfriend for all the effort she makes dressing up and using make up to look pretty… don’t just say, “you’re pretty”, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, but instead think of all the effort she made to be pretty, and thank her for making the effort for always looking her best when she is with you. As you start to be grateful for others’ work, you will also naturally lower your expectations from them, you’ll know that they’re doing their best just as you, and instead offer to help them with their work, and guess what? People don’t forget as easily as one may think, and next time you’re at your very limit you might find a helping hand in the most unexpected of places. This world is round and everything goes around and around, if you help others, others will help you, if you are grateful for others’ work, and thank them, others’ will also be grateful for yours and thank you and encourage you… If you keep taking from others then eventually the world will start taking from you, and you’ll lose everything. 

Work hard

As I said above, all the whales and 99% of millionaires and billionaires won their money working their asses off (instead of spending it in weed or in parties). All of them have dreams and goals, and they’re working hard to make them happen, many of them are actually incredible nice people that are worried about the future of this world and want to improve it (Disclaimer: There are exceptions). Many donate, many others teach, many write their experiences, etc… There is much we can learn from them, how to keep going when things get rough, ways to make money (at least the ways they use), many of them are also excellent speakers and charismatic people. 

If you’re a hard worker and make a sincere effort to learn from them and surpass yourself, you’re very likely to gain a friend. Those of you who’ve read this far know that working hard without appreciation is hard, but that’s exactly why we must work harder to change this world and become better persons. My voice is tiny, I’m only a single person who has no money, no influence and no power whatsoever; but I can’t give up, WE can’t give up, my voice may be tiny and my two hands can barely provide food for me but if all our voices join together and we join our hands, we can make wonderful things happen; remember, all of us are worried about our future, about our kids... and no matter how hard the whales, the CEOs and everyone else around us works, if WE don’t work hard for our planet and our future, we won’t have a future. 

A simple example of hard work you can make is help to improve steemit, every one of us is responsible for this platform: I’d like to introduce my friend to a wonderful platform with a high amount of quality content where people communicate, where people make an effort to publish high quality products. Instead I would be introducing him to a place where lots of people and bots abuse the system to make money, instead of focusing on working hard to make innovative and original content. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t lots of quality content on steemit, quite the opposite, but the overall mentality is focused on milking the system instead of creating a great community with high quality posts (and I'd like someone to find this post in a few years and tell me I'm wrong and Steemit is great and everyone is awesome). I would like to help change that mentality, and I’m sure that by working hard here you can get noticed too and make friends with humans and people who are like you (and perhaps a little cash along the way). 

Final words

I cried a lot writing this, it really is HARD pouring your heart and soul into an article, especially if you know that it will probably be ignored by a huge amount of people, but even so, even when it seems like a lost cause, we need to try right?. 

I say that I’m fortunate to be poor, I’m 100% sure that all the upvotes and comments I receive will be from people that truly believe in this and that agree with my point of view, no one will vote or comment expecting to receive money or influence in return since I got none to give… this is only something I, as a minnow and a poor soul can do, and I’m grateful for this unique opportunity to meet great people. 

Sorry for the long text (I did warn it would be a very long post), I hope it helps everyone find friends, both in high places and in not so high places, I also hope that this philosophy of life helps you find even more happiness in your life, and that it helps you as much as it has helped me. If you agree with my point of view or want to add something please do so in a comment. This post won’t generate any income so I won’t blame any of you if you don’t want to upvote it and waste your voting power and curator awards and so forth… just remember that there are things that cannot be bought with money, if this post reaches the eyes of the whales they WILL know that we’re grateful and it may motivate them to keep working hard to keep steemit alive, and that alone is worth much more than any amount of money you can earn on a post or a vote (well, maybe not ANY amount, but any realistic amount), all I’m trying to say is… if you feel like joining this tiny voice, DO IT!, the only way we can change this world is working together, be true to yourself as well, if you hate this post DOWNVOTE IT!, yes, I said it, downvote it!, don’t turn a blind eye, work for what you’d like steemit and this world to be!. 

Kind regards 

A tired, red eyed… Eilder Jorge.  

 P.S: If you'd rather hear the words of professional and famous people instead of this tiny voice, look on internet for Dale Carnegie or Toby Robbins… both are great people and teachers as well and suggest similar ways of life.