How Those Around You Influence Your Success

Imagine you grew up in a household of lazy underachievers. Now imagine you grew up in the household of high achievers. How would your perspective be different today? You can’t change your past, but you can influence your future by choosing the people in your life carefully. The people around you influence your beliefs and expectations.

Surround yourself with supportive high-achievers:

1. People can be either supportive or unsupportive. Have you ever noticed how many people wish you luck but then seem to sabotage your efforts? Most of the people in your life want you to do well, as long as you’re not doing significantly better than they are. Have you ever heard these statements after announcing a bold goal or plan?

• “Are you sure you want to do that? Remember that time you wanted to _______ and it didn’t work out?”
• “What will you do if your business idea fails? You’ll be out on the street.”
• “I could never lose that much weight. I like eating Twinkies too much. It would be horrible to follow a diet for that long.”
• Are these types of statements truly intended to be helpful, or discouraging?

2. Gain access to new people. Those around you can introduce you to new people. One of them may ultimately become your mentor or be the business contact you’ve been searching for.

• Every person you know already knows lots of people that you do not. These people that are unknown to you may become a valuable resource.

3. The people around you can teach you new things. Everyone you know has something to teach you. Are you hanging out with the right people to learn the things you need to know?

4. The people around you influence your attitude and expectations. You can’t help but be influenced by those around you. It has been argued that you can’t rise above the results of the five people you spend the most time with. You can learn a lot about success from your social network.

• Imagine you’re a real estate agent and you’re spending time with the most successful real estate agent in your city. You earned $100,000 last year, and she earned $1,000,000.
• You call five expired listings each day and send 50 postcards each week to potential new clients. You come to learn that your new friend calls every expired listing each day and sends out thousands of postcards each week. She even has two full-time assistants to handle her incredible workload.
• She’s also doing forms of marketing you’ve never even considered.
• Consider how this can change your life. You suddenly realize that you’re not working nearly as hard or as creatively as you could be. You start to wonder what else you could be doing better. It’s an eye-opening experience.

The people around you matter. With whom are you spending your time? Are you choosing to spend time with those that inspire and support you? Are you spending time with people that struggle with life and sabotage your best efforts to excel?

You have to power to choose the people you spend the most time with. Choose intelligently and you’ll experience greater levels of success.