25 Ideas that Shaped my 2025 (Part 2) Relationships

Imagine going through 2025 again from January 1st through December 31st, but this time remove every person you interacted with throughout the year. If the year feels incredibly empty. Then that encapsulates the power of the relationships in your life.

I’ve heard this same phrase three years in a row. The first time was from a book called “The Power of Moments” when talking about mentorship. The second was in my favorite Newsletter by Sahil Bloom where he talked about this matrix in terms of relationships and used his dad as an example. And a few days ago, I heard it again on one of my favorite podcasts where the guest talked about it in relation to raising children. With all these disparate places converging on the same idea, it’s clear there’s a universal truth behind it. Here’s the breakdown:

Find people in that top right quadrant and hold onto them by being a top right quadrant person for them. I call these people cup fillers. They fill your cup with empathetic listening, showing up for you, and energizing your battery. I would not be who I am today if not for my cup fillers. If your circle is lacking cup fillers, change your circle.

First is your internal dialogue. Our internal dialogues are predisposed to be negative. It’s an uphill climb to make peace with ourselves. In the same way that happiness is not a destination, but a direction. Inner peace was at the forefront of my 2025 focus. I can definitively say, I’ve built more inner peace in 2025 than any other year.

Now, picture yourself taking care of a dog that you feed fast food and alcohol every day. You’re probably disgusted with that imagery. Then ask yourself why do we take care of others better than we take care of ourselves. One of the phrases I like when it comes to leveraging that willingness to do more for others is: “I’ll take care of me, for you.” The me that only needs to worry about myself is always going to make bad short term decisions. But the me that’s wanting to lead the rugby kids I coach by example, climb mountains with my eventual significant other, or be a role model for a future child. That’s a me that is better at taking care of himself for them.

If you’ve never gone down a “The School of Life” rabbit hole at least once in your lifetime. I can say once you’re in, it’s one of the strongest gravitational forces you’ll encounter. Alain de Botton is one of the most eloquent speakers and writers.

I sometimes fault myself when i’m unable to establish or maintain an interaction with someone. But then I find myself in other interactions where words flow freely, emotions are expressed safely, and ideas are exchanged rapidly. Saying this “person i’m not connecting with isn’t introspective enough” is too easy of a scapegoat. What this philosophy gave me, is that I should not try to bring everyone to my depth. I should be meeting them at theirs and understanding how I choose to inhabit that shared space. Tim Urban puts it most succinctly in his “Traffic Test” idea. Could I sit in the car with this person talking about literally anything? If the answer is yes, then this is a one week person instead of a one day or one hour person.

This one cut through me like a knife. I sat with this idea on a daily basis for at least half the year. I’m admittedly not doing enough to date. It’s so much more comfortable to never have to face rejection or come to the slow realization that you and your idealized partners are actually fundamentally incompatible. Constantly finding people whose values are misaligned and what you both want out of life is too different. When my first therapy homework assignment was to define intimacy. I spent hours laboring over the different possible avenues and meanings intimacy has. Ultimately, I landed on a few key components:

The purpose of the exercise was to look at everyone I meet through the lens I just created. Do I feel safe around them? Is my body giving physiological tells that this person does not fit that definition? And in the end, is it more damaging to be alone or with someone who is out of alignment with the life I want to build? As I continue to date to marry. I don’t plan to sacrifice intimacy for validation through that process.

Here’s another set of words that resonated deeply. I regularly ask a terrible question. That question is this: what would life be like if I never met [insert person’s name]? There are numerous obvious faults with that line of thinking. The most major fault comes down to the fact that the thought experiment’s unspoken assumption is giving up your sense of agency. At the end of the day, a past version of me chose to dedicate whatever energy, monetary, and time investment in those people. I may not like the outcome of those investments now. But those were my decisions at the time. I cannot fault others retrospectively.

If I’m seeking friends who offer something different than the ones I have today. That does not mean I need to fully remove the friends I have currently. What I need to accept is that your network speaks to you and I need to know what it’s saying. Alex Hormozi coined the term “Lonely Chapter” to describe the time in your life that you have outgrown your current friends and have not yet fully grown into your new friends. The Lonely Chapter is inevitable for me. This past year showed me that there’s a cost to waiting that I need to stop paying.

Everything you think you do/think that is weird and unique is probably not so. The problem is that you have billions of data points on yourself. And you only have a finite amount on others. I always thought I was different, weird, and one of a kind. To a degree, I am. But there are also other facsimiles to me that others will encounter and use me as a proxy. “Oh you’re into rugby or travel internationally or read a lot? You’re like my friend Jeremy.” It turns out, I am not so rare after all.

That brings me to the meaning of the sign off from this blog/newsletter: From the Jeremy Boco that existed on X date. I quote a passage from the book Range that goes: “The precise person you are now is fleeting, just like all the other people you’ve been.” This version of me knows a lot:

In the relationships I have with others, myself, and the world. I am me.

There is nobody else I’d rather be.

All ideas and opinions in these newsletters are expressly my own. If I use AI to aid in the assistance of my writing, i will disclose it. I did not use AI in the writing of this piece.