When somebody close to you goes quiet about your plans, or warm and discouraging at the same time, you will know what that reflex is. It is not disloyalty and it is usually not wrong on the facts. It is accurate caution from an altitude you are trying to leave.
When you notice everybody around you earns roughly what you earn, you will know that is not a coincidence and not a choice anybody made. The room keeps its own average. Your income is partly the room's, and so is your spiritual average and your professional one, and those three move separately.
When the donkey steps onto the path, you will know the cost of answering it is not the argument. It is the climb. Agree, and keep walking.
And when you want to know who is really there, here is the test, and I am not telling you to give up your friends. You will truly understand how many friends you have when you are in a dire situation. God forbid something happens to your wife, your child, the person you love most, and you need a lot of money tonight. Make some phone calls. How many of them will rescue you? How many will rescue your parents, or your kids?
The best ones will say a nice word. The rest will not care, and they will disappear. So run those calls in your head, count who answers, and then ask why you were spending so much of yourself on the opinions of the people who did not. You are responsible for your family and you are responsible for your future.
The cost of success is not only hard work. One of the most painful costs, and the one nobody talks about, is the decision to cut the people who do not want to see you succeed and who pull you down.
So it is your decision. Your current circle, or the next level. You do not get both.