Wake is the product of a vessel such as a boat moving through water but an aircraft moving the air does not generate wake but instead turbulence as it passes by. When you move through your life improving who you are, you generate personal development turbulence.

The faster you move, the quicker you improve and develop, which leads you to perform more exaggerated movements and thus create more personal development turbulence. The unrest you cause affects everyone around you. When you produce turbulence in a society, you create a substantial commotion in the lives of people who are close to you that may not be welcome. Not everyone is going to enjoy the unrest generated by your growth and that instability will upset many of those people.

The problems you face from other people as you pursue your goals will come from a variety of sources and relationships.

Close Relationship Negativity

Negativity from close relationships such as family and spouse can be the most hurtful and the most damaging to our self-esteem for two very simple reasons: Our loved ones know the most about us, our strengths and weaknesses and how to mentally and emotionally hurt us the greatest. And they are the ones we expect the most support from when we do try to improve our own lives so it hurts even more when this encouragement is not received or tugged away from under our feet when least expected.

The people close to us when not in our corner are our Kryptonite weakness. The negativity is born out of envy, fear of loss and a generally pessimistic outlook on life that nothing can get better for them and their like.

Friendship Negativity

The negativity that emanates from friends is similar to that we find in our family and loved ones. The negativity is occasionally a fear of loss, but mostly due to envy and jealousy of others. Our own socio-economic standing will dictate many of the friends we keep, our income level, our manner of speech, our politics, our social activities and our outlook on life are all within a close percentage of those we associate with.

In school, I was rather academically challenged and left with no qualifications to speak of, and so did most of my friends. None of my immediate family up to that point had gone on to university for even undergraduate study. I was 17 years old, barely out of school, when I began taking the first tentative steps into my pursuit of personal development.

At the age of 19, I decided that I would like to begin improving my education on my own terms as the video games industry began to slowly change and more companies began asking for computer science degrees. When I decided to advance my education even the merest amount and explaining the reason why to friends, i.e. to pursue a degree, the response I got went through various stages from asking “why even bother,” to “you’ll never see it through to the end,” all the way to “you’re so dumb you’ll just fail.” As a matter of fact I did not fail, and as I improved my education, I gained new friends and dropped many of my older friends who no longer meshed with my goals and the new direction my life was taking. I found that studying in a college and in adult classes where many of the students were far older than I was a much more interesting and rewarding experience than I had ever encountered during my regular school years.

A few years in to my furthering education, at the age of 22, I decided that the reason to get a degree was not just for the academic achievement and to maintain my desirability to game development companies, but to actually open up new career opportunities that I would not have access to otherwise.

My idea was simply that after I graduated from the degree course that I look in to the possibility of seeking work in either Japan or America. When I discussed these possible, very indefinite plans with friends both in and out of college, the universal response was “Don’t do it, you’ll hate it.”

Within time, I secured a job in California but right up until the very day that I was to leave I had friends telling me that it was not worth the effort, that I would fail, that there was no point to going and that I would hate the place. Even the counter staff at the local Chinese Takeaway, who I was on good friendly terms with, would say, “Why would you want to do that? There’s nothing there that you can’t get here.” Now if you have the second generation of Chinese immigrants saying that to you, you know that something is screwy with society’s outlook.

Co-Worker Negativity

Negativity also comes from your co-workers and this is where it has only one root cause: pure and simple professional jealousy. The jealousy will not just stem from your direct peers but also from your boss too. This jealousy can seriously influence your emotional state as you are made to feel you do not deserve whatever it is you have earned or are striving towards.

The jealousy of colleagues will come often not in direct conflict but in more subtle ways such as passive-aggressive behaviours, sabotaging your work, doing the minimum necessary to not get reported if they are working directly with you on a project that you have some control over, delays in delivering components of a project to you that will make your own work late, and other unprofessional conduct in the work place.

Just shortly after graduating on my degree, I held two short-term contract positions at two different companies as I worked on finding a job in either Japan or America. On both of those separate contract jobs, I made it clear to the hiring manager and my immediate supervisors that I would not be seeking a long term position with the company before I was hired, they were both short-term contracts after all. I made sure that everyone involved in the project understood that I was there to do just that job.

The first contract job I took was for a year, but unfortunately the company that I was working for did not have sufficient funds to continue developing the product I was working on so I left on amicable terms with many of the people there. On my day of departure, my immediate supervisor and I were discussing where we would find work next. I mentioned once more that I was working on finding a job in America (I had narrowed it down from Japan or America by then) and already had a tentative job lined up but the company was having some difficulty getting the visa dealt with due to the H1B cap. My now ex-supervisor scoffed loudly at that, deriding my decision to pursue my goal and stating, “It’ll never happen in a month of Sundays.”

I met that self same supervisor a little under a year later at the Computer Game Developers Conference (now called the Game Developers Conference) in the San Jose area as I was walking around the expo floor. He had managed to scrape together the funds to pay his own way from England to California and get to the conference, as it was something he had wanted to do for a few years but could never afford it. I had just taken a cheap flight up from Los Angeles and the company I was contracting for was picking up the rest of the tab. I must admit it was gratifying to see the look on his face knowing that I had succeeded in my goal whereas he was still doing the same old thing for an unappreciative company.

The second job I worked, my immediate supervisor threatened to call up the American embassy and make outrageous unfounded claims as to my character if I did not postpone leaving the country for another six months. I want you to understand that the job I was hired on to perform was for not more than six weeks and I completed the small project in less time than that. But… let us just say this is the average, run-of-the-mill development company that is poorly managed and there was always one more task that needed to be taken care of on a completely different project. Me, being the affable and helpful kind of guy that I am, was always pressed upon by management to help out, and I did so, where I could, without trying to let it jeopardise my own goals.

My point is, when you know you are doing the right thing, when you are pursuing your goals, many co-workers will be jealous of you and attempt to do the wrong thing by you. Yes, their envy and jealousy will bring you down with them but it is borne of their sickness, not yours. They are doing wrong by you because they know you are succeeding by doing only just a little more than they are, something that they could be doing themselves but for whatever personal reasons, they choose not to do.

Casual Acquaintance Negativity

Negativity emanating from casual acquaintances is generally not hurtful unless you allow it to be. Casual acquaintances do not know you well enough to make invective remarks that can psychologically hurt you. Other than the usual slings and arrows that they randomly hurl, the negativity will merely slow down your personal development. Only if you let it, will the negativity from your acquaintances affect your actual mental well-being.

People Who Only Know Of You Negativity

There is a world of difference between knowing you and knowing of you.

I know my friends, my girlfriend and my family.

I know of Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and Barack Obama.

I can form reasonably valid character evaluations of people that I know. However, any opinions I form of people that I know of are merely just that, opinions. Moreover, my opinions will be based on partial facts, half-truths, third hand accounts, and a public persona.

As you pursue your personal development, during your journey to success, you will attract the negativity of people who do not even know of you. You personally have never done anything to them or had any sort of impact upon their lives in any way, shape or form, but they will find something to dislike you for. Every village has its gossipmonger. It is why I have little patience with people who say “Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.”

Those that state such a thing have obviously never lived in a village full of narrow-minded people, nor been remotely successful enough to warrant the attention of a crowd. No matter how unblemished your character is, no matter how virtuous you are, when you are even slightly successful or slightly different there will be someone that hates you for what you are, what you have done or what you are attempting to do.

Jealousy, envy, racism, sexism, character flaw; call it what you will but someone, somewhere will hate you for all they are worth simply because you have succeeded where they cannot. It is one thing to suffer random misfortune but it is quite another to have it thrust upon you by someone who knows nothing of you or about you, they will persecute you for the simple act of what you have done with your life whilst they did not. It is a fact in life that no matter how carefully you tread there will always be someone, somewhere annoyed at what you do, say or think.

There is an old quote, written by Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC, Greek Philosopher) and again later by Elbert Hubbard (1856 – 1915, American writer, publisher, and philosopher) that I will paraphrase here:”To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, achieve nothing.”

It is a fine quote but it is also a quote born in naivety of the human mind for there will always be someone annoyed at you for something, even if all you have to offer the world is the good grace to live an average life and die a quiet death.

Three Reasons For Negativity

For casual acquaintances and people that only know of you in some vague way the negativity comes from three sources.

The least important reason is the general malaise that large parts of the population suffer from, this melancholy is to be found throughout the world but fortunately, it does little to you on a day-to-day basis other than a general projected gloominess that may alter your mood. On certain days, it may be difficult to insulate yourself from the pessimism of others but maintaining a healthy outlook and positive, upbeat attitude to your own mental state and having solid goals to pursue will insulate you from most of the damaging effects.

The second source of negativity from people that do not know you is pervasive in everyone, those that know you and those that know of you, this source is dissatisfaction with their life, a life that for large parts of the populace is sub-standard. Think about it, if you believe that right now you lead an average life, and you live in a small city of 100,000 people, even if you plot on a bell-curve, 50,000 people have a worse life than you do, even if only marginally so. If you have the audacity to climb above that 50,000 people, moving yourself from the left of the bell-curve to the right, you will only be showing them how bad their own lives are. It will be a slap across the face, even if only gently, that someone, somewhere, is doing better than they are, and human nature being what it is, this will breed jealousy and resentment borne of discontent.

The third reason that people who do not know you will have a negative reaction to you is because you are different and anything different is to be feared and eradicated. It does not matter what the difference is, it just has to be different in the wrong way. A funny accent, an odd walk, long hair, the incorrect clothes, preferring to quietly study instead of getting drunk every night, going on to college instead of working in the mine, anything and everything is open to derision and negativity.

There is a microcosm of these feelings and reactions visible on the school playground every day. Multiply that microcosm by a thousand or a million or more so that it encompasses a large part of the population and as you move forward in your personal development gaining more and more successes, this negativity from people that only know of you will increase right along with it. It takes a lot of self-discipline and knowing your own mind and not allowing yourself to be swayed from your intended goals to deal with this accumulation of negativity that gathers all around you as you improve your life.

How to deal with that negativity I intend to cover in future articles but just being able to identify who will put up roadblocks to prevent you achieving your goals and how they will do it is a powerful tool available to you.

I have a very good friend whom we shall refer to as Mary for the sake of this article. Mary is a very capable woman in her early forties who began to lament her sorry lot in life whilst travelling back to my office with me. Recently she had lost her fairly well paid, high profile job as a director at a company. From observation I would say that the job loss has caused her a little bit of depression and has been a blow to her self-esteem. I have been witness to, and easily fallen in to the trap myself, of the delusional thinking that having a job working for someone else, and being gainfully employed is the natural state of affairs. It’s all part of the social conditioning we are subjected to. It is how I ended up with my first ever "real" job where I was not working for myself but for an actual company with set hours, a manager above me, a real payroll system and everything! I blame my parents for this sorry state of affairs. J It is often the case that we define who we are by our work, by our jobs, by the company we are employed at, as though the business name on a pay cheque can tell us who we really are.

Mary was worrying that her skill set was not sufficiently up to date; I know for a fact that it is. Her skills are in fact way beyond any level she would find necessary to do any of the jobs that she is interested in pursuing. Amongst her lamentations was also one where she was concerned her resume, now a grand total of four pages in length because of all of her experience, didn’t work for her anymore in the "new economy" with the upstart companies and employees all chasing after the hot new thing. It was really just basic fears of having to now look for a new job in a recession surfacing as age old insecurities that most of us have. A fear of the unknown, of the future, of leaving our comfort zone, of change.

All I can say is that listening to this tirade of insecurity made me think about our two differing viewpoints on the same situation. Let me just re-iterate this part, Mary is incredibly capable and intelligent; I find her to be quite intimidating in her abilities. She saw the situation as one to be feared, full of difficulty, adversity, and an almost insurmountably impossible position. I saw the situation entirely the opposite. Moreover, as I often do, I got on my soapbox – figuratively speaking, I was driving after all – and pretty much detailed her new opportunities

The change from having a full-time office job that consumed most of her life to her current situation is a huge opportunity to outright reinvent who she is. In a previous job that Mary held, the one before the one she lost, she worked almost every waking hour for an unappreciative group of bosses. She left that company to work at a small start-up and in that creative, dynamic atmosphere, she flourished. The pay was not anywhere near as good, sometimes the hours were completely insane, but she enjoyed the work, the people and the atmosphere, she became energized and driven. Now that she is looking at a new job, again she has the opportunity to go back to what she has always done or redefine who she is as a person.

Other than a small amount of balance on her credit card left over from a vacation she took recently, she has no actual debt to speak of. All of her liability is in the form of cyclical billing, e.g. cell phone, rent, utilities, etc. How many of us can honestly state that we are so free from revolving credit and extensive loans that our only financial obligations are whatever monthly services, such as internet or cell phone, we choose to purchase? How free would you be if you owed nothing? How much extra money would you have available at the end of every month?

Currently she is without a job, and other than this simple fact, she is not so badly off. She does not have anyone to answer to, she does not have to arise in the morning or retire to bed at specific times other than those she sets for herself. She can plan her day how she pleases. She can take off at a moment’s notice to visit family and friends or just sit under a tree and do nothing. She is also free to pursue whatever hobby or start-up business opportunities she chooses.

She has no obligations other than to pay her current cyclical bills on time, which she is capable of doing. In addition, note how I mentioned she has no obligations. I did not say no responsibilities. Most people mistake obligation, i.e. having to go to work to pay for your revolving credit financial debts or ensuring your children have a college fund, with responsibility. Her obligations are practically nil, zero, zip, nada. Her real responsibilities revolve around herself with no obligations to anybody else at this time. So few of us are so free that we can make a decision based on what we want without consideration of our obligations to others.

She has no children in her life and she is currently single. She has no deep relationships other than with a handful of friends scattered across the world and no familial ties that root her to one geographic location. Without the financial burden and obligation of childcare or supporting teenage children through their last, highly expensive years of high school, she is free to direct any of her financial resources wherever she chooses. She is also free to direct her energies and creativity to any endeavour she decides on for that day. Her concerns and worries, which I am sure to her are quite huge, are actually minor. She has been given a completely new beginning for her life with the freedom to do what she wants with care or worry.

I had to remind her whilst I was on this tirade that she has opportunity to do anything she wants. I said it as clearly and as plainly as I could to her: “You’re no longer bounded and defined by the job you recently held. You are no longer corralled in your thinking of what is possible. You are no longer cowed in your thinking of what you can do. You can do and be anything you want.”

When you have that sort of independence, you are completely free to go anywhere you want. You can spend your time sat in your apt, you can take to the open road and travel anywhere, you can take a job just down the road or on the other side of the world and there is literally nothing to stop you. The whole world has been opened to you as an opportunity. If you are willing to live cheaply, and few of us are unfortunately, you can take any job that interests you without concern of how much it pays or how long it will take you to get good at it. You have been given an enormous opportunity to start all over with knowledge, skills, and experience that you never had when first starting out.

I liken the autonomy that Mary is currently undergoing to the same sort of situation that the suddenly wealthy are placed in. People that win the lottery or inherit a great deal of money from their dead rich Uncle suddenly find they are going in one of two directions. They either continue completely with their ingrained daily life because they do not know any other way of existing or they completely stop following their old routine and begin a new life of excess and waste. Neither choice is really acceptable or satisfactory to the person’s long-term happiness, health and lifestyle.

A few years back when I first began my software company I took rented office space in a high rise building in Los Angeles. In the office next door resided a financial advisor who in addition to doing basic financial work for very wealthy individuals also gave advice to people who became instantly wealthy, such as an inheritance recipient or lottery winner. These are people that became wealthy overnight, going from an average Joe or Jane, to having so much money they do not know what to do with it. Part of his job entailed being a lifestyle counsellor for those that would never have to work another day in their entire life.

Acquiring sudden wealth if you have never been privy to it in the past can come as a shock to the system for many people. The average person is not educated or equipped with the skills to handle large quantities of money, worry about investment vehicles, or concern themselves with excessive spending or racking up insane amounts of personal liability through recurring expenses. A person who overnight finds themselves rich has not had the wisdom of time. The skills necessary to handle this change in your life are trivial to learn and applied with a little discipline can insulate the suddenly wealthy individual from what can be a traumatic period of their life before they finally self-destruct.

There are training courses and various programmes available, though they are few and far between and sorely lacking, for people who are returning to work after a long absence or have to retrain due to redundancy. In addition, I am beginning to think that maybe there ought to be counsellors available that can help people who suddenly find themselves with complete liberty from all obligations. While we are playing the “fantasy life game” maybe we can have some real counsellors that can teach people how to find work and retrain for a new career, not just the asinine "back to work" programmes that usually pervade the landscape of the job seeker.

But let us get back to Mary for a minute. Mary has at this time an amazing amount of freedom that so very few people, once they leave school and get on the career treadmill, will ever have in their entire life. Mary is free to pursue whatever she wants and go wherever she chooses.

Many people I have spoken to over the years are utterly petrified of freedom in all its forms. Freedom from their finances, freedom from obligation, freedom from responsibility, freedom from work, freedom from oversight, freedom from management. Most people, if not all, when pressed will say such things as "Oh, that would be nice" or "Yeah, I’d like to do exactly as I please" which is then quickly followed by "but…" or, if you are from the UK, "People like us were never meant to have that sort of thing." I almost want to weep and cry out in frustration when I hear people say that. They have become so institutionalized in the social dogma that their thinking and will has been so absolutely suppressed by "their betters" that the average person have no concept of a better way of living nor any desire to live it when shown.

When someone is set free from obligation or concern through whatever means such as being newly retired they have no clue of how to behave or how to go on with their day. The education they have is insufficient to handle the situation and the social doctrine they live by prevents most people from attempting to do something different when there is no longer anyone telling them what to do or when to do it.

If you suddenly found yourself with freedom today, how would you behave? What would you do? Where would you go? It is often worthwhile brainstorming various scenarios and journaling your thoughts because if you apply yourself to personal development and self-improvement one day you will find yourself in precisely this situation.