I read on another blog recently written by an Amway IBO, that your real friends would not walk away or cease to be your friends because of involvement in Amway. I do not believe your good friends would abandon anyone because of their involvement in Amway. However, they might avoid you for a while if you are always talking about Amway, or bugging them to join Amway. They might also feel that it is the IBO who has deserted the friendship in order to attend the endless number of Amway meetings and conventions.
As a former IBO myself, I know that I sacrificed many birthday parties, social events, and backyard barbeques. Our upline told us that these minor sacrifices would pay us back a hundredfold in the future. Looking back, not a single IBO crossline or my sponsor, ever got any significant payout from Amway. I believe that some IBO's relationships with friends and family may suffer, but not because of their involvement in Amway per say, but because the IBO is putting the relatiionships on hold while they pursue their Amway dream. It's almost like a friend who leaves home to attend an out of town college. Eventually they come home and your friendship is still there.
As an Amway IBO, I remember our upline telling us that we needed to separate ourselves from friends at times, to avoid negative. I believe this is still true today, based on what I see coming from current IBOs. IBOs might call it "association", where they think they are "hanging out" with successful people, but the reality is that the masses of IBOs are broke dreamers hanging out with each other. They aren't truly associating with "rich" people. It's a lie.
Ironically, our upline taught us that we as IBOs were all friends for life. I recall a high level WWDB leader commenting that an IBO who "quits" is leaving their friendship, therefore the remaining group is not responsible for the failed relationship between current and former IBOs. When an IBO says friends for life, what they really mean for most is that you are friends for life as long as you never quit Amway. This is one of the reasons why Amway has been compared to a cult.
Shortly after leaving the Amway business, my father passed away. Not a single person upline or crossline called or visited to pay their respects or to express their sympathy. Friends for life indeed.
People who are heavily involved in Amway can't make friends. Friendship is based on a no-strings-attached affection between parties. You are friends with someone if you like him, respect him, and enjoy his company regardless of his flaws or bad points or disagreements with you. In other words, the friendship is "disinterested," in that it has no special motive or goal behind it. You're not trying to "get something" from him, and he's not trying to "get something" from you.
ReplyDeleteAmway makes that kind of disinterested friendship impossible. An Amway freak is obsessively concerned with Amway, and nothing else. Everything in an Amway freak's life revolves around the business of recruiting new IBOs and pushing Amway products.
There's no room for real friendship in this kind of life. An Amway freak sees you from only one perspective -- as a possible recruit into the "Plan." And everything that he does or says with you will be connected in some way with that stupid 6-4-2 scheme. Even if you join Amway, he'll still think of you as nothing but a source of money and down-line, and everything you discuss will be on those two subjects.
I don't know how anyone in Amway can use the word "friendship" with a straight face. Amway is just a business cult that uses down-line persons as cannon fodder for enriching yourself at their expense. "Friendship" in Amway is nothing but love-bombing, back-slapping, handshaking, and a lot of phoney-baloney hype.