If a life tragedy happens or some other sort of emergency situation, you want supportive people on your side.  2022 had no shortage of tragedy and drama.  I am greatly fortunate to have my wife Sophia as one of the top supporters, and she represents the kind of people you need on your side during times like this.  

Your support doesn't necessarily have to be a spouse, there could also be a support network of people who are into fitness, or some other life-enhancing hobby that understand who you are about.  This can really change your life, if even less than 1% of the population is into fitness but you're surrounded by such people it changes the perspective.  The community you build makes it look like more people are into fitness than you realize.

But whatever it is, or whoever the people are, one thing you don't want are haters.  These are negative people that just sit there and criticize your plans and how you go about dealing with your issues.  They don't offer any constructive feedback to what you are facing, nor do they apply any principles of self-improvement to their own lives.  It won't be an easy step to make but if such people are in your life, you'll need to find a way to get rid of them.   

One thing all the haters have in common:  they are not forward thinking.  They are dealing with their own past hurts so they take it out on others who are making active progress to improve their lives.

This takeaway really crystallized when I left China for the first time after the pandemic.  While it's clear I'm not a fan of the Chinese government it also works the other way around.  The government in Canada also sucks in other words.   It might even be worse.  I saw *with my own eyes* all the hidden resentment and racism towards Chinese abroad.  Hey, these immigrants aren't the enemy, they rejected the communist party!   My wife was a lot more acute at picking up on this than me since it affected her directly, but I was still a sub-target for a lot of the anti-China resentment due to my expat background. 

It got to the point where I was so scared during my Texas trip to admit I was a China expat, so made up all kinds of stories as to where I was from.  Shockingly they bought it, even the part where I was from Vegas.  

But there is a lot of shit to deal with back home.  For example a credit card company blocks my accounts because they find out I live in China.  Apparently we're now the bad guys and lumped into the same category as Russia or Iran.  They wouldn't be wrong but now I have to be super careful not to do transactions overseas, and to keep my Canada and US phone numbers active for a working SMS verification.  

It'll probably be some time before we do another trip to Canada or the US for all these reasons.

Even better yet there have to be other countries out of the orbit of all this China vs US geopolitical tit for tat.  Relations have never been worse