Comprehensive Success — The Three Categories of People Medicine!
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People Categories
Categorize People in I’ve noticed those three distinctions VERY clearly in friends but instead of just categorizing appropriately the “friend” as a
- Drag (Enemy; Direct Impediment to Your Goals) — Bad Medicine — Very Much Not Interested
- Neutral (Neutral Person; Potential Client) — Neutral Medicine — Not Interested
- Galvanizer (Good Friend) — Good Medicine — Very Interested
I reacted negatively to the draggers and positively to the Galvanizers. The result was, quite simply, that ended up fearing people in general because I didn’t know how to deal with the debilitating presence of a dragger.
Now the solution is simple: you cut out the “pseudo-friends” who drag you down! Someone ridiculing your goals is only feedback. You don’t take it personally! You just use their dragging, discouraging words as evidence to verify your choice to cut them out of your life!
This is tremendously liberating and necessary! What happens if you don’t do this? If you fail to label someone as a dragger, a galvanizer, or a neutral person? You’ll have draggers clinging to you, galvanizers pushing your forward, but draggers causing you to go in reverse. And you’ll instantly realize you just stutter, stop, and fail. I’ve experienced this.
We’ve established that there ARE those three types of people. Those three types of people DO exist. In my life the “draggers” have been disgustingly more abundant than the galvanizers. Cut them out! Don’t let draggers into your life! Let Galvanizers in!
Great, we’ve established the following postulates as truth:
- There exist three different types of “friends”: draggers, neutral, and galvanizers.
- Eliminating draggers from your life increases success.
- Adding Galvanizers increases success.
- And possibly turning neutral people into clients increases success.
Excellent. Now the big question is we know that doing 2-4 will increase our success. The question is HOW do we do that? How do we implement that?
Do we, for example, upon identifying a galvanizer, say “Hey, you’re awesome! Can I schedule a time to meet up with you every day this week?” or upon discovering a dragger, scream “Get the frick out of my life you Dragger!”. Hhhmmm those approaches may work, but they may be too extreme, too. I propose possibly making a list of what I call Good Medicine, Neutral Medicine, Bad Medicine.
The Multiple Calendar Approach – I interacted with two people, a couple, and felt crippled, debilitated, frustrated, hurt, and worthless afterwards. Clearly they were both draggers and both were very Bad Medicine. How do we work with this? Do we create a Bad Medicine list? This seems wise. Better yet, if you’re actually on the same page as the rest of the planet and are using an electronic calendar, why not simply make three categories of contacts — Good, Bad, and Neutral Medicine? How would that work? If you noticed someone had a bad medicine effect on you, you simply put them in the Bad Medicine cluster of contacts. Eventually, after maybe a few months you’ll weed out and eliminate contacts from your Bad Medicine contacts. Now the best part is you’ll have definitive Rules set up with each of the contact clusters! Remember, the purpose of all of these is to ensure that people who freak out and feel intimidated by you succeeding are left out of the picture of your life. Hell if they can’t contact you on the phone then they’ll have a hard time negatively debiliating you! And this encourages Good Medicine people from contacting you!
So I use Apple Address Book. It’s an incredible, synced up, awesome contact management program. There’s so much you can do with it and it amazingly syncs up incredibly with my iPhone and I love the whole interconnectedness with apple products! Okay, enough of my sales pitch for Apple 
. So if you write on a contact “BadMed” or “GoodMed” or “NeutMed” consistently and then make a smart contact folder for them, things will work amazingly well because if you get a call from someone you can instantly check to see if they’re labeled as a dragger, neutral, or galvanizer, and then respond appropriately.
Responding Appropriately : Language as Medicine.
Guess what, if I get a phone call from a guy who says “Hello, I’m hear to dump a bucket of Hydrocholoric acid on your arm. Where should we start?” You don’t say “Well, let’s do it fast at first and save some of the pain for later.” Hell no!! You get the frick out of the way and hang up on the person. Well, draggers, or Bad Medicine people have the exact same effect. Anyone who’s read 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World, knows that Words ARE medicine. Language can manipulate and delude you into actually achieving your dreams when you didn’t think you could (galvanizers can do this!!!), and language can warp your life into the hell of incapacity even when you’re incredibly capable (draggers do this to you!). I’ve experienced this on NUMEROUS occassions! Endlessly. Here’s too quick examples before we get back to responding appropriately. I was a runner in school (even though I prefer swimming now), so both of these examples are running based. Then I’ll get back to the Script, the Language, the actual action to deal with draggers and galvanizers.
Because everything is causality, people. We’ve got to understand the causality effect here. We get a call from a dragger or galvanizer that we’ve properly identified, and we need to respond accordingly, or we WILL :
- Become pinioned in failure with a bucket of noxious toxic langauge poured on us in the flavor of “Oh you can’t do that! That’s awful. That won’t happen!” (Dragger — Bad Medicine)
- OR
- You will get more people who have the language that gets you going to do exactly what it is that you want to do! Along the lines of “You’re awesome. You have the strength, smoothness, and intelligence already. It’s done, you’ve already achieved your goals! Congrats!” (Galvanizer — Good Medicine)
An example of how Powerful Good Medicine and Bad Medicine Langauge Is.
Sub 5-Minute Mile: When I was 16, I broke 5 minutes in the mile. I accomplished this because I eliminated draggers (Bad Medicine people) and listening to galvanizers (Good Medicine people). Hold up. Hold the presses. Can you believe that?! I’m tell you, people, this is amazing stuff. Eliminating draggers and listening to galvanizers was more potent than any kind of adrenaline, steroid, crap drug booster could ever have done. This is medicine! By eliminating draggers and listening to galvanizers, I was able to move my physically revolutionize not just my sense of self, but my physiology, body, and body-mind connection. Now this was not just a “well I felt a bit more uppity”. No, I mathematically increased my performance massively. And using the galvanizer, neutral, and toxic (GNT) categories of people medicine instantly transcribes to improving the relationships, career, organization, and health areas of your entire life, too. So, onward with this anecdote.
I was sick and then went to school late, hopped in a van and simply didn’t listen to the teammates that ridiculed my talk of surfing. The coach and a few other people entertained (Good Medicine) my talk of surfing, so when we arrived at the meet, I busted out in the mile and was so exhilarated (not weighed down by Bad Medicine people) that I stayed in front of EVERYONE for the first 3.75 laps of the entire race! In the remaining 300m 2 people passed me, and then I passed up one of the two people who had passed me, and took second in the mile! I knocked over 30 seconds off my previous time of 5:23, got a 4:51 minute mile, lead the entire first 93% of the race, and got a second place medal — ALL, ALL, ALL because I chose to listen to galvanizers and ignore toxic draggers!!!!!! Make that choice, people! It’s an awesome one! I was NEVER able to do that again. I talked with a friend about how my color visual percetion literally changed to “blue”. My entire visual field was blue for the entire run! So the impact of galvanizers changed how I literally, optically, saw the world! My friend joked that it was called “going unconscious” which is what happens to basketball players a lot — a kind of zen state of satori. And that may have well been the state I was in, but we’re focusing on the cause, and the cause was because of applying these people medicine principles! Now, I was never able to do that again, Not because of lack of running talent or physiological skill, but because I failed to make an incision and surgically remove the draggers from my life and only have galvanizers. But look what happened when I dealt with good and bad medicine appropriately: I literally “grew wings” and broke an athletic barrier I never thought possible! You will grow your wings, too, upon eliminating bad medicine and creating good medicine in your life!
Cross Country : The Bad Medicine example. Well this was two years after the appropropriate usage of good medicine and eliminating bad medicine that enabled me to break 5 minutes in the mile. Every single race I did (which was around 20) my senior year, when I thought I should’ve had the most athletic talent possible, I sucked! Why? Because so much Bad Medicine people had infected my life. I became depressed and my entire finesse and agility suffered and I became drained.
A Quick Note on Suffering: Everyone thinks that suffering is this epic religious struggle of Jesus walking in the sand for 40 days, or fasting, or some kind of human sacrificing…Blah Blah. Struggle and Suffering is the Product of having Bad Medicine people and language in your life and not Eliminating them. The Cessation of suffering is learning to eliminate Bad Medicine people and maintain Good Medicine People!
So let’s focus on HOW to do that!
We talked about the Address Book categorization. GREAT! Identifying and properly labeling (think of this like GTDing people instead of just papers!) Process people, baby! Okay, awesome, this is exciting and liberating.
Step 1 : Identify and Label (Good, Bad, Neutral Medicine)
Step 2: Appropriately Respond based on Causality.
If you get a phone call from someone you’ve already identified you should have three responses.
- Respond to Bad Medicine — Hang up. Delete the Voicemail.
- Respond to Good Medicine — Take the Call, or make a note to return the call (after all this type of person has a positive effect on you!)
- Respond to Neutral Medicine — Optionally return the call or email.
- Respond to Unidentified Contact — This is what will be most common. You have not yet identified someone as good, bad, or neutral medicine. How do you deal with that? One way is NEVER take the call or answer the email until you’ve evaluated. This is the safest. You can see why jumping on the ball and getting this down will bring tremendous certainty!
The Wisdom of Flexibility: Be open and be flexible to them changing. Be open and flexible to the people changing. You have to be open to flexibility. But not too much flexibility because you cannot be evaluating a person everytime you interact with them.
So let’s do this:
You have to define success in order to experience success.
Dealing with Emails:
One solution is channeling all the contacts from different email address! It’s so easy to have different accounts these days. If someone because Bad Medicine, ensure that they start sending email to your other account (just tell them you changed your address, which is fine because in your mind through the cognitively essentially judgmental label, you HAVE changed your address with them!). And then have an account for neutral, good medicine, and finally a catchall for unidentified contacts. Great! That way, when you log into each account you’ll know to expect bad, neutral, good, or unidentified medicine. Sweet!
- Step One: Go through ALL contacts and just put each one into 1 of the 3 categories
- Step Two: Respond appropriately.
- Step Three: If you get an unidentified contact (Which will be frequently), do not take the call nor email untill you’ve properly identified them.
- Step Four: Grow wings and live a more complete life!
Part two of the People Medicine Install Kit, is here.
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Nice post, thanks.
Thanks for the positive feedback! As a professional blogger who’s started over 7 blogs, the one’s that endure (have had one for 6 years) are the ones that have traffic and positive feedback. So if you like these posts, comment and we’ll keep the articles coming and the inspirational life-validation work flowing!
Thanks for posting, I’ll definitely be subscribing to your blog.
Awesome!! Great to know the Validate Your Life blog has attracted Galvanizer “Good Medicine” people as part of its readership!!!
Think of this blog as an oasis not just for lucidity, but a place to take your bearings with relationship, career, organization, and health. Onward!! Thanks again. More positive feedback and readership is what we need to keep the posts going!
Hey, great post, really well written. You should blog more about this.
[...] Comprehensive Success — The Three Categories of People Medicine! [...]
I have found this post to be great! I’ll find out where the wordpress’ follow button is, and follow your blog!
-Charles from chasmsblog.blogspot.com
How do you do these for free? This regulated my life and was very helpful. Thank you. I needed this.
Incredible! I need more galvinizers in my life – I’ve had way, way too many draggers.
Ironically, I am drawn to draggers and feel like I ignore my galvinizers. I think this also applies to family members! Why do we, as a society, spend 90% of our time on the 10% who don’t deserve it? Think schools, criminal justice system, etc.
Hey scooter!
I totally agree. These categories of people medicine are so valuable to me that I may turn it into a mini ebook and podcasts. This is the type of “social alignment” skills I wish I had years ago. I know what you mean, about “am drawn to draggers and feel like I ignore my galvinizers. “! We get accustomed to certain types of reactions. If we’ve been around 90% of our time with draggers, then if we experience galvanizers, people who encourage, nurture, inspire, and create confidence and success, we may think something is fishy! But nothing is peculiar. The only peculiar bizarre, somewhat unintelligent thing is to squander time with debilitating toxic people. I think there’s a tendency to avoid labeling people. But if a certain type of person is the equivalent to an emotional virus, crippling your productivity and success, wouldn’t it be more valuable to develop a way to make a distinction between a virus-type of person impact and then people that are uplifting? Your life changes when you do this. I’m still implementing it, but the moments I focused just on galvanizers instead of toxic draggers, my energy, my confidence (my speed, in the above example) all skyrocketed. Galvanizers ForTheWin!!!
not sure I know what you mean with “spend 90% of our time on the 10% who don’t deserve it? Think schools, criminal justice system, etc.” Whom/what doesn’t deserve our time? Are you saying schools, justice system doesnt’ deserve time or does? Do you think people that are biologically related to you have the capacity to be draggers or galvanizers? Of course! I don’t think clustering organizations or connections and saying one is more appropriate to spend time with is wise. If certain family-members are draggers, stay away from them! If certain lawyers are galvanizing, spend more time with them!! If you have family members that teach in a school and are judges in the justice system and one is a galvanizer and the other is a dragger, connect with the galvanizer, ditch the dragger! Isn’t it more important to identify and form allegiance with the galvanizers — regardless of their profession, area of work, or relationship to you — than to say “Oh I have to connect with xyz person because they’re part of abc thing even though they make me feel worthless”. This article is about relinquishing ties with anyone that weighs you down and more importantly connecting with the galvanizers, at whatever the cost (and there is not cost, because your ROI of connecting with galvanizers is the best investment possible of the most valuable thing — your time!). That’s the common denominator. A biological relationships or the fact that someone works “in a school” (huh?) or with justice (huh?) is irrelevant to their individual impact on you. It’s important to objectively ask ,”Does this person make me feel — the effect — uplifted (galvanizer), neutral, or debilitated, defragmented, befuddled (dragger)?” That question can be very difficult to answer because many times a part of our brain goes, “What, I’ve known this person for like 5 years, they couldn’t possibly be a dragger!” Wake-up. Change is so challenging because people hold odd beliefs like the one above. Duration of a relationship is irrelevant to the quality of the relationship. You don’t keep a pile of moldy cheese in your fridge “just because it’s been there for 2 years” do you?! Of course not.
The reason why this is challenging, is because we’re taught that people are warm and fuzzy beings that need to be treated with care and not labeled. We’re taught that we shouldn’t judge people and that judgments are bad and to “be nice to everyone”. Golden Rule: Do as to others….That may be true, but not labeling people. You’re being honest with yourself when you deliberately say “You know what, xyz person really makes me feel uplifted and joyful! I want more of that!” or say “Xyz person seriously feels vindictive” and then taking actions that encourage higher frequency of uplifting people and less frequency of interaction with toxic people. You’re only practicing self-denial and intrapersonal dishonesty by avoiding making said judgments. Because what happens if you don’t acknowledge the impact certain people have on you? You end up wasting your time with them. You go to dinner with them and smile fake smiles and laugh fake laughs and everyone squanders there time because if you aren’t benefitting (if the relationship isn’t galvanizing), you aren’t “really there”. This may be somewhat too metaphystical, but if you’re interacting with a toxic person, you’re either “not fully engaged in the interaction” or you’re masochistic and like feeling debilitated and tarnished. I’m sure the latter is not true.
When you interact with galvanizers, you’re day is always increasing in progress and passion. This sounds cheesy and a bit overly-optimistic, but it is mathematically true. In fact, the application of galvanizer, neutral, and toxic labels should be executed like a science. I’m not saying people should be relegated to applying labels to beakers in a chemistry lab, but the impact of toxic chemicals and a vial of poison and a cure to some kind of virus, although extreme analogies, are valid comparisons to the impact of people. People are bundles of beliefs, behaviors, and patterns. Just like certain chemicals can harmoniously fuse and others dangerously combust in a laboratory, you have to observe the reaction of the “people vials” and appropriately apply one of the three people medicine labels. If you do not do not apply the three labels of people medicine, you live life like a haphazard chemist randomly mixing substances living with only the wavering “hope” that volatile interactions don’t explode. Do yourself a favor: label your vials. Apply the three categories of people medicine.
You do this, you “fix” 1/4 of your life (the Relationship component). You do that, and you’ll instantly notice an instant progression in the results you want to see in your health, career, and organization. When you fix the relationship part of your life, you’ll notice an instant attraction to healthier foods. Your career will feel easier and more fulfilling and you’ll be drawn to habits that increase your organization.
Awesome insights!
Thanks for article. Everytime like to read you.
Hi,
Thank you! I would now go on this blog every day!
Greatings, Thanks for article. Everytime like to read you.
AnnaHopn
Interesting, I`ll quote it on my site later.
AlexAxe
Awesome, just be sure to cite John Thomas Kooz Kuczmarski and http://blog.validateyourlife.com. Great. Glad you found this interesting. It’s important to ask yourself before every interaction “How do I estimate I will label this person” and usually your prediction of them being toxic-draggers, neutral, or uplifting is most of the time, spot on!
Massive thanks for the positive feedback and most importantly for leaving comments! We may go into subscription mode, but for now, these comments are crucial to maintaining momentum of this blog. We’re in the process of changing our “if people keep reading, we’ll keep writing the inspirational articles on relationships, health, career, and productivity” method for the purposes of solidifying membership for the value of these articles. We may shift into subscription method, but for now comments and feedback are extremely appreciated!
Pretty cool post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say
that I have really liked reading your blog posts. Anyway
I’ll be subscribing to your blog and I hope you post again soon!
Hi, interest post. I’ll write you later about few questions!
[...] The Lifecoach's Polemic | Subscribe This is undoubtedly an expansion upon the massively popular Thee Categories of People Medicine post. And could be easily called the third installment of said prescription for health and relationships [...]
Super-Duper site! I am loving it!! Will come back again – taking you feeds also, Thanks.
Hi, good post. I have been woondering about this issue,so thanks for posting. I’ll definitely be coming back to your site.
Good work! Thank you very much! I always wanted to write in my blog something like that. Can I take part of your post to my blog? Of course, I will add backlink?
Wait…which one is Britney?
Of course, what a great site and informative posts, I will add backlink – bookmark this site? Regards, Reader.
I rarely comment on blogs but yours I had to stop and say Great Blog!!
LOL, sdanektir. I know your intention was humor, but this is actually a decent question. I won’t answer it because everyone defines how they apply their own dragger-neutral-galvanizing labels. However, it’s a good idea to label people or events even if you don’t know them but if you interact with them. For example, if someone figure on television continuously gives “advice” that encourages self-deprecating patterns and increases problems in someway (like if someone constantly talks about eating junk food, for example). How could such a person NOT be a dragger? It’s perfectly acceptable to merely judge the effect someone has on you regardless of having a personal relationship with them.
HEll Lena,
Yes. Please feel free to quote my blog just as long as you cite. Thanks for sharing!