00:00:06
Speaker 1: Hey team, Glen Azar here, welcome back to the Building Better Humans Project podcast, proudly brought to you by Adventure Professionals, www.adventureprofessionals.com.au. Today is going to be a hard, tough conversation. I'm going to be pretty raw about some things, about some people, and about loyalty. And as I said in the beginning of this, or in the title of this, loyalty is a standard, it's not a transaction. You see, there are some beliefs that I think you need to hold lightly. You need to be willing to question them, challenge them, and even change them when you receive new information. You need to be mature enough to admit that something you once believed may no longer be true, or that perhaps it was never true in the first place. Because growth requires flexibility. But there are also values... that you need to hold tight, values that form a part of your foundation, values that shape the way you live, the way you lead, the way you love, and the way you show up for the people around you. For me, loyalty is one of those values. Loyalty is really big, really big for me, always has been. Maybe it's my military background. Maybe it's what's been ingrained in me. I believe that when someone is one of my people, I will stand beside them. I'll support them. I'll encourage them. I'll defend them when they're not in the room. I fight for them in rooms they may never even know I was in. If someone starts speaking badly about a person that I care about, someone in my inner circle, I do not sit there quietly because speaking up might be uncomfortable. I do not join in because I want to be accepted by the crowd. I do not allow somebody I call a friend to be torn down simply because they're not present to defend themselves. That's not who I am. If you're one of my people, I will stand up and say something. But one of the harder lessons I've had to learn is that loyalty does not necessarily go both ways. It's not always reciprocated. There are people that I've supported, donated to, held up and fought for. People I've defended in rooms they weren't in. People I've helped when there was nothing in it for me, other than seeing somebody I cared about succeed. And some of those same people have not shown that loyalty back to me. As soon as something happened that they didn't like, or as soon as I was no longer useful to them, they disappeared. Calls stopped being returned. Messages went unanswered. Support vanished. People who once seemed close became ghosts. And if you or somebody, I mean, this is my opinion anyway, if you are somebody who takes loyalty seriously, and I am, that can be incredibly difficult to digest. Your first instinct may be to internalize it. What did I do wrong? Why was I not worth fighting for? How could they walk away so easily after everything we'd been through? Why did I matter? when they needed my help, my platform, my time, my money, my advice or my connections, but suddenly stopped mattering when those things were no longer required. Those questions can consume you if you let them. But I had to learn that another person's lack of loyalty is not automatically evidence that there's something wrong with me. Sometimes it has very little to do with me. And I had to sit with a confronting thought. People are seldom loyal to you. Many are loyal to the need of you. And when the need disappears, so does their loyalty. That's a sobering thought. It's one that I had to become comfortable with, not bitter about, but comfortable with. Because there is a danger here. When you're hurt by disloyalty, you can start questioning whether your own loyalty was a mistake. You can become cynical. You can decide that caring deeply makes you weak, that supporting people makes you naive, or that the safest way to live is to trust nobody and need nobody. But that's not the lesson here. The lesson is not to become less loyal. The lesson is to become more discerning about who receives your loyalty and what access they have to your life. I will not allow someone else's character to lower the standard of mine. My loyalty is a reflection of who I am. Their loyalty, or their lack of it, is a reflection of who they are. But while I will not become less loyal, I will become more selective because loyalty is valuable. and valuable things should not be handed out carelessly. Now, let me make something very clear. Loyalty does not mean blind agreement. It does not mean that you have to believe everything I believe. It doesn't mean that you can never challenge me, question me, or tell me that I'm wrong. In fact, if you genuinely care about me, there will be times when I need you to do exactly that. A loyal friend is not someone who applauds every decision you make. A loyal friend is someone who cares enough to tell you the truth, even when the truth is uncomfortable. If I'm acting outside my values, I expect the people closest to me to pull me aside and say, mate, this is not you. You need to take another look at this. If I have hurt somebody, made a poor decision or allowed my ego to take control, loyalty is not helping me justify it. Loyalty is holding me accountable before the problem becomes worse. There is a significant difference between between accountability and betrayal. Accountability comes to you. Betrayal talks about you. Accountability wants you to improve. Betrayal wants an audience. Accountability protects a relationship by having the difficult conversation. Betrayal avoids the conversation, gathers supporters, and builds a case against you in rooms that you're not even in. That is the distinction. You do not have to agree with me to be loyal to me. But if we call each other close friends, I expect you to come to me before you go to everybody else. I expect you to ask questions before making assumptions. I expect you to seek context before accepting somebody else's version of events as fact. And when outsiders become involved, I expect the strength of our relationship to mean something. That doesn't mean defending the indefensible. It doesn't mean lying for me. It doesn't mean compromising your integrity to protect mine. It means not throwing away years of trust because of one conversation, one rumour, one disagreement or one moment that you have not taken the time to understand. It means you come to me, you look me in the eye, you have the hard conversation because that's loyalty. We also need to stop calling everybody our friend. Some people are acquaintances. Some are colleagues, some are clients, some are people we know through sport, business, community or social media. And some are genuinely a part of our inner circle. Those are not the same relationships and they should not carry the same expectations or receive the same access. Not everybody who celebrates with you is committed to you. Not everybody who likes your posts likes you. Not everybody who benefits from your generosity values the person behind it. And not everybody who calls you when they need something has earned the right to know your private battles. I have learned that access should be earned through consistency. Watch what people do when you have nothing to give them. Watch what they do when you say no. Watch what they do when you are struggling and cannot be the strong one, just for a little while. Watch what they do when supporting you is inconvenient, unpopular or invisible. Watch what they say about other people when those people leave the room. because one day that'll most likely be you. Anybody can appear loyal when the relationship is easy and beneficial. Character becomes visible when loyalty carries a cost. If somebody is only loyal to their need of me, to what I can do for them, then we have no business pretending that we're in each other's inner circle. Now, that doesn't mean I hate them. It doesn't mean that I need revenge. It doesn't mean I have to publicly expose them, attack them, or spend the next five years telling everybody how badly I was treated. It simply means I adjust their access. No hatred, no performance, no drama, just clarity. You've shown me what this relationship is, and I will respond to the evidence in front of me. And this is where my boundary is firm. If you show me that you are disloyal, you will only ever get to do that once.
00:08:34
Speaker 2: Once.
00:08:35
Speaker 1: Now, I'm not talking about a genuine mistake followed by ownership, remorse, or changed behavior. We're all human. We all get things wrong. Strong relationships need room for honest repair. I'm talking about a clear choice to betray the relationship. If you weaponize something I shared with you in confidence, if you disappear the moment I'm no longer useful, if you join the crowd against me without first having the courage to speak to me, if you repeatedly accept my loyalty while offering none of your own, then you have given me information I cannot pretend I did not receive. You can be forgiven without being given the same access again. I can wish you well without inviting you back into my inner circle. I can let go of the anger without forgetting the lesson. Forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing. Forgiveness may be a decision that I make for my own peace. Reconciliation requires both people. It requires accountability, honesty, Repair and evidence that something has genuinely changed. Trust is built slowly and can be destroyed quickly. And while people sometimes deserve grace, nobody is automatically entitled to regain the position they once held in your life. That may sound harsh to some people. I'm comfortable with that. Boundaries often feel harsh to people who benefit from you having none. I know what loyalty means to me. I know the standard I live by. And I will not apologize for protecting the people and relationships that matter most to me. One of the biggest wastes of energy is trying to convince people to stay after they've already shown you that they want to leave. We chase explanations. We send another message. We make another call. We replay every interaction and wonder what we could have done differently. We start performing in the hope that they will recognize our value and come back. but you're not a performing monkey. You do not have to perform for clicks, likes, applause, or acceptance. You do not have to keep proving your worth to people who were comfortable receiving from you, but unwilling to stand beside you. Let people make their choice and then make yours. Focus on the people who choose to be in your life. Stop neglecting the loyal people beside you while chasing the attention of people who left. That is something many of us get wrong. We become so focused on the person who did not call that we fail to appreciate the person who always answers. We become so hurt by the people who did not defend us that we overlook the people who stood beside us for years. We spend our energy trying to reopen a closed door while ignoring the people already sitting at our table. Don't do that. Perform for your people. Show up for your inner circle. Invest in your family, your blood family and the family you've chosen. Give your time, energy, and loyalty to the people who demonstrate through their actions that the relationship matters to them too. That is not transactional. It's reciprocal. There is a difference. Transactional loyalty says, I will support you only while I'm getting something from you. Reciprocal loyalty says, we both protect this relationship. We both contribute. We both tell the truth. We both show up. It will not always be perfectly equal. Relationships rarely are. At different times, one person is going to carry more of the load than the other. But across time, the commitment should be visible in both directions. It's easy to listen to an episode like this and immediately make a list of everybody who's failed you. But I feel like that would miss an important part of the message. Before judging everybody else's loyalty, I want you to examine your own. Are you the person who speaks up when someone close to you is being attacked in a room they're not in? Do you go directly to people when there's a problem or do you talk about this to everybody else except them? Do you only contact certain people when you need their help? Do you celebrate your friends when they succeed or does jealousy cause you to withdraw? Can you challenge somebody privately without humiliating them publicly? Can the people closest to you trust you with their fears, failures and vulnerabilities? And when a relationship becomes inconvenient, do you communicate honestly or or simply disappear. We cannot demand a standard we refuse to demonstrate. If loyalty matters to you, live it. Don't just post about it. Don't just expect it. Don't use the language of loyalty to control people while behaving disloyal yourself. Set the example. Be the person who keeps confidence. Be the person who tells the truth. Be the person who has the difficult conversation. Be the person who shows up when there's nothing to gain. And be the person who knows when to close the door without needing to slam it. So yes, hold some of your beliefs lightly. Remain curious. Stay teachable. Be willing to change your mind when better information becomes available. But know which values form your foundation and hold those values tight. For me, loyalty will always be one of them. I bleed loyalty for my people. but I've learned that I cannot expect everybody to live by my values simply because I do. I cannot control whether somebody else is loyal. I can only control the standard that I set, the people that I trust, the access that I give, and the boundaries I enforce when somebody shows me who they are. Their seasonal loyalty does not make my loyalty foolish. Their absence does not reduce my value. Their choice to leave does not require me to chase them. My loyalty reflects who I am. Their disloyalty gives me information about who they are. And once I have that information, I will move accordingly. No bitterness, no apology, no second opportunity to betray the same trust. Focus on the people who choose you. Protect the people who protect your name when you're not in the room. Value the ones who tell you the truth to your face and defend your character behind your back. And stop performing for people who only remember you when they need something. Your energy belongs with your people, your inner circle, your family, your blood literally or figuratively. That is where your loyalty belongs and that is where your life is built. Until next time, keep showing up, keep holding the standard and keep building better humans.
00:15:17
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Building Better Humans podcast with your host, Glenn Azar. For feedback, to stay up to date or go back and find an old episode, head over to 180.net.au. Yeah, the Building Better Humans project podcast.
00:15:34
Speaker 1: Let's go.
Speaker 1: Hey team, Glen Azar here, welcome back to the Building Better Humans Project podcast, proudly brought to you by Adventure Professionals, www.adventureprofessionals.com.au. Today is going to be a hard, tough conversation. I'm going to be pretty raw about some things, about some people, and about loyalty. And as I said in the beginning of this, or in the title of this, loyalty is a standard, it's not a transaction. You see, there are some beliefs that I think you need to hold lightly. You need to be willing to question them, challenge them, and even change them when you receive new information. You need to be mature enough to admit that something you once believed may no longer be true, or that perhaps it was never true in the first place. Because growth requires flexibility. But there are also values... that you need to hold tight, values that form a part of your foundation, values that shape the way you live, the way you lead, the way you love, and the way you show up for the people around you. For me, loyalty is one of those values. Loyalty is really big, really big for me, always has been. Maybe it's my military background. Maybe it's what's been ingrained in me. I believe that when someone is one of my people, I will stand beside them. I'll support them. I'll encourage them. I'll defend them when they're not in the room. I fight for them in rooms they may never even know I was in. If someone starts speaking badly about a person that I care about, someone in my inner circle, I do not sit there quietly because speaking up might be uncomfortable. I do not join in because I want to be accepted by the crowd. I do not allow somebody I call a friend to be torn down simply because they're not present to defend themselves. That's not who I am. If you're one of my people, I will stand up and say something. But one of the harder lessons I've had to learn is that loyalty does not necessarily go both ways. It's not always reciprocated. There are people that I've supported, donated to, held up and fought for. People I've defended in rooms they weren't in. People I've helped when there was nothing in it for me, other than seeing somebody I cared about succeed. And some of those same people have not shown that loyalty back to me. As soon as something happened that they didn't like, or as soon as I was no longer useful to them, they disappeared. Calls stopped being returned. Messages went unanswered. Support vanished. People who once seemed close became ghosts. And if you or somebody, I mean, this is my opinion anyway, if you are somebody who takes loyalty seriously, and I am, that can be incredibly difficult to digest. Your first instinct may be to internalize it. What did I do wrong? Why was I not worth fighting for? How could they walk away so easily after everything we'd been through? Why did I matter? when they needed my help, my platform, my time, my money, my advice or my connections, but suddenly stopped mattering when those things were no longer required. Those questions can consume you if you let them. But I had to learn that another person's lack of loyalty is not automatically evidence that there's something wrong with me. Sometimes it has very little to do with me. And I had to sit with a confronting thought. People are seldom loyal to you. Many are loyal to the need of you. And when the need disappears, so does their loyalty. That's a sobering thought. It's one that I had to become comfortable with, not bitter about, but comfortable with. Because there is a danger here. When you're hurt by disloyalty, you can start questioning whether your own loyalty was a mistake. You can become cynical. You can decide that caring deeply makes you weak, that supporting people makes you naive, or that the safest way to live is to trust nobody and need nobody. But that's not the lesson here. The lesson is not to become less loyal. The lesson is to become more discerning about who receives your loyalty and what access they have to your life. I will not allow someone else's character to lower the standard of mine. My loyalty is a reflection of who I am. Their loyalty, or their lack of it, is a reflection of who they are. But while I will not become less loyal, I will become more selective because loyalty is valuable. and valuable things should not be handed out carelessly. Now, let me make something very clear. Loyalty does not mean blind agreement. It does not mean that you have to believe everything I believe. It doesn't mean that you can never challenge me, question me, or tell me that I'm wrong. In fact, if you genuinely care about me, there will be times when I need you to do exactly that. A loyal friend is not someone who applauds every decision you make. A loyal friend is someone who cares enough to tell you the truth, even when the truth is uncomfortable. If I'm acting outside my values, I expect the people closest to me to pull me aside and say, mate, this is not you. You need to take another look at this. If I have hurt somebody, made a poor decision or allowed my ego to take control, loyalty is not helping me justify it. Loyalty is holding me accountable before the problem becomes worse. There is a significant difference between between accountability and betrayal. Accountability comes to you. Betrayal talks about you. Accountability wants you to improve. Betrayal wants an audience. Accountability protects a relationship by having the difficult conversation. Betrayal avoids the conversation, gathers supporters, and builds a case against you in rooms that you're not even in. That is the distinction. You do not have to agree with me to be loyal to me. But if we call each other close friends, I expect you to come to me before you go to everybody else. I expect you to ask questions before making assumptions. I expect you to seek context before accepting somebody else's version of events as fact. And when outsiders become involved, I expect the strength of our relationship to mean something. That doesn't mean defending the indefensible. It doesn't mean lying for me. It doesn't mean compromising your integrity to protect mine. It means not throwing away years of trust because of one conversation, one rumour, one disagreement or one moment that you have not taken the time to understand. It means you come to me, you look me in the eye, you have the hard conversation because that's loyalty. We also need to stop calling everybody our friend. Some people are acquaintances. Some are colleagues, some are clients, some are people we know through sport, business, community or social media. And some are genuinely a part of our inner circle. Those are not the same relationships and they should not carry the same expectations or receive the same access. Not everybody who celebrates with you is committed to you. Not everybody who likes your posts likes you. Not everybody who benefits from your generosity values the person behind it. And not everybody who calls you when they need something has earned the right to know your private battles. I have learned that access should be earned through consistency. Watch what people do when you have nothing to give them. Watch what they do when you say no. Watch what they do when you are struggling and cannot be the strong one, just for a little while. Watch what they do when supporting you is inconvenient, unpopular or invisible. Watch what they say about other people when those people leave the room. because one day that'll most likely be you. Anybody can appear loyal when the relationship is easy and beneficial. Character becomes visible when loyalty carries a cost. If somebody is only loyal to their need of me, to what I can do for them, then we have no business pretending that we're in each other's inner circle. Now, that doesn't mean I hate them. It doesn't mean that I need revenge. It doesn't mean I have to publicly expose them, attack them, or spend the next five years telling everybody how badly I was treated. It simply means I adjust their access. No hatred, no performance, no drama, just clarity. You've shown me what this relationship is, and I will respond to the evidence in front of me. And this is where my boundary is firm. If you show me that you are disloyal, you will only ever get to do that once.
00:08:34
Speaker 2: Once.
00:08:35
Speaker 1: Now, I'm not talking about a genuine mistake followed by ownership, remorse, or changed behavior. We're all human. We all get things wrong. Strong relationships need room for honest repair. I'm talking about a clear choice to betray the relationship. If you weaponize something I shared with you in confidence, if you disappear the moment I'm no longer useful, if you join the crowd against me without first having the courage to speak to me, if you repeatedly accept my loyalty while offering none of your own, then you have given me information I cannot pretend I did not receive. You can be forgiven without being given the same access again. I can wish you well without inviting you back into my inner circle. I can let go of the anger without forgetting the lesson. Forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing. Forgiveness may be a decision that I make for my own peace. Reconciliation requires both people. It requires accountability, honesty, Repair and evidence that something has genuinely changed. Trust is built slowly and can be destroyed quickly. And while people sometimes deserve grace, nobody is automatically entitled to regain the position they once held in your life. That may sound harsh to some people. I'm comfortable with that. Boundaries often feel harsh to people who benefit from you having none. I know what loyalty means to me. I know the standard I live by. And I will not apologize for protecting the people and relationships that matter most to me. One of the biggest wastes of energy is trying to convince people to stay after they've already shown you that they want to leave. We chase explanations. We send another message. We make another call. We replay every interaction and wonder what we could have done differently. We start performing in the hope that they will recognize our value and come back. but you're not a performing monkey. You do not have to perform for clicks, likes, applause, or acceptance. You do not have to keep proving your worth to people who were comfortable receiving from you, but unwilling to stand beside you. Let people make their choice and then make yours. Focus on the people who choose to be in your life. Stop neglecting the loyal people beside you while chasing the attention of people who left. That is something many of us get wrong. We become so focused on the person who did not call that we fail to appreciate the person who always answers. We become so hurt by the people who did not defend us that we overlook the people who stood beside us for years. We spend our energy trying to reopen a closed door while ignoring the people already sitting at our table. Don't do that. Perform for your people. Show up for your inner circle. Invest in your family, your blood family and the family you've chosen. Give your time, energy, and loyalty to the people who demonstrate through their actions that the relationship matters to them too. That is not transactional. It's reciprocal. There is a difference. Transactional loyalty says, I will support you only while I'm getting something from you. Reciprocal loyalty says, we both protect this relationship. We both contribute. We both tell the truth. We both show up. It will not always be perfectly equal. Relationships rarely are. At different times, one person is going to carry more of the load than the other. But across time, the commitment should be visible in both directions. It's easy to listen to an episode like this and immediately make a list of everybody who's failed you. But I feel like that would miss an important part of the message. Before judging everybody else's loyalty, I want you to examine your own. Are you the person who speaks up when someone close to you is being attacked in a room they're not in? Do you go directly to people when there's a problem or do you talk about this to everybody else except them? Do you only contact certain people when you need their help? Do you celebrate your friends when they succeed or does jealousy cause you to withdraw? Can you challenge somebody privately without humiliating them publicly? Can the people closest to you trust you with their fears, failures and vulnerabilities? And when a relationship becomes inconvenient, do you communicate honestly or or simply disappear. We cannot demand a standard we refuse to demonstrate. If loyalty matters to you, live it. Don't just post about it. Don't just expect it. Don't use the language of loyalty to control people while behaving disloyal yourself. Set the example. Be the person who keeps confidence. Be the person who tells the truth. Be the person who has the difficult conversation. Be the person who shows up when there's nothing to gain. And be the person who knows when to close the door without needing to slam it. So yes, hold some of your beliefs lightly. Remain curious. Stay teachable. Be willing to change your mind when better information becomes available. But know which values form your foundation and hold those values tight. For me, loyalty will always be one of them. I bleed loyalty for my people. but I've learned that I cannot expect everybody to live by my values simply because I do. I cannot control whether somebody else is loyal. I can only control the standard that I set, the people that I trust, the access that I give, and the boundaries I enforce when somebody shows me who they are. Their seasonal loyalty does not make my loyalty foolish. Their absence does not reduce my value. Their choice to leave does not require me to chase them. My loyalty reflects who I am. Their disloyalty gives me information about who they are. And once I have that information, I will move accordingly. No bitterness, no apology, no second opportunity to betray the same trust. Focus on the people who choose you. Protect the people who protect your name when you're not in the room. Value the ones who tell you the truth to your face and defend your character behind your back. And stop performing for people who only remember you when they need something. Your energy belongs with your people, your inner circle, your family, your blood literally or figuratively. That is where your loyalty belongs and that is where your life is built. Until next time, keep showing up, keep holding the standard and keep building better humans.
00:15:17
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Building Better Humans podcast with your host, Glenn Azar. For feedback, to stay up to date or go back and find an old episode, head over to 180.net.au. Yeah, the Building Better Humans project podcast.
00:15:34
Speaker 1: Let's go.
