How The People Around Us Shape Who We Are
I remember clearly when I moved from a small village in the Netherlands to study abroad. And later when I started a corporate job at an international company. That the people around me were a lot smarter then me and talked about things I didn’t know about. They did things I had never even heard about. This expanded my worldview and I started to want to learn, improve and push myself more.
It was not that my environments before that were bad, it was just that they didn’t push me or take me anywhere.
Recently I had such a change again, when I quit my corporate job and decided to cross the Atlantic on a cruise ship with a group of Digital Nomads. Here I again got exposed to people who knew things that I didn’t, and who did things I never did but wanted to try.
My real motivation however, came after this cruise. I spent three weeks with one of my best friends in Panama City. I love discussing with him about anything worth discussing and he is a person that really holds me up to a higher standard of life. Among others he inspired me to read, write, exercise & meditate more.
Because of this recent rendezvous, I decided to read up on the concept of ‘how the people we hang out with influence us’:
The theory
You might have heard the concept: “You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with” by Jim Rohn
This rule suggests that the five people we spend the most time with, shape who we are. It borrows from the law of averages, which is the theory that “the result of any given situation will be the average of all outcomes.” So eventhough we connect with many people, its only those few that are closest to use that really influence and have impact on our way of thinking and decisions.
Goethe earlier famously phrased this as, “Tell me whom you consort with and I will tell you who you are.” And even earlier Seneca wrote to a friend:
Choose someone whose way of life as well as words, and whose very face as mirroring the character that lies behind it, have won your approval. Be always pointing him out to yourself either as your guardian or as your model. There is a need, in my view, for someone as a standard against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler to do it against you won’t make crooked straight.
As the famous life coach Tony Robbins points out, “The quality of a person’s life is most often a direct reflection of the expectations of their peer group.” So our life is a reflection of our standards, or what we are willing to tolerate.
Still a great deal of people are wiling to tolerate unhealthy relationships, crappy jobs and unhappy lifestyles. Having such people around us greatly influences us and then our level of talent and ‘potential’ are largely irrelevant. Which causes a lot of unfulfilled potential.
So if people close to us can influence our life in a negative way, why do we keep on having them around us?
Why do people hang out with the people they hang out with?
Most people select their friends based on proximity, rather then anything else. This is especially true for children and teenagers, but often also for adults.
Think back to school for example. Its unlikely you were selecting friends based on similar personalities and interests. It was rather who was sitting next to you in the classroom or who lived nearby.
Most people adapt to whatever environment they find themselves in. They have what psychologists call an ‘external locus of control’, where they believe factors outside of them dictate the direction of their lives. And thus they live reactively to whatever life throws at them.
The people we have been surrounding ourselves with in the past, and definitely in our younger years, have laid down the foundation for our habits, and our views on the world. Especially our mothers had a big influence on this.
This really shapes who we are at the moment, and I think we should be grateful for it. But whether we like it or not so much there is nothing we can do about it. What we can do, is actively search for people to surround ourselves with, that might help us achieve the goals we have in life now and in the future.
Thanks to technology, the rise of the internet and especially social media, that is easier than ever. We can now move from a very local environment to connecting with groups of people all around the world. Geography is no longer a barrier to that.
And there are an explosive amount of groups of people with very specific interests that can help bring us joy, peace of mind and realize our goals. So we have everything at our disposal. But its not just the people we hang out with that shapes who we are.
We meet the people around us because of what we do
What we actually do might be even more important. Because what we do puts us around people. And these people help set the baseline for what we think is ok, what we think is possible and what we’re exposed to.
If we are unhappy about the our environment great ways of changing this are to try new hobbies, habits and books. Something that challenges us physically, mentally or spiritually. And through doing this and finding something we love and that aligns with our values, we will find the people that we want to be around.
So it seems to be very important to surround ourselves with the people that help realize our visions and a way to achieve that is by doing the things we like. Now lets have a look at how very successful and accomplished individuals actually do this.
How do successful people ‘use’ their friends?
Nobody grows up being smart or wise or successful just by themselves. It is all about the environment they put themselves in.
Yes, Elon Musk is a brilliant thinker and super fast learner, but he also surround himself with the most brilliant people in their respective areas to make his businesses become successful.
He is a member of the PayPal mafia. In the technology world there are many ‘mafias’, which are collaborative networks of entrepreneurs who of the back of one successful collaboration have started new initiatives together or kept on advising and investing in each other.
Another member of this mafia is Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn. He has put these types of relationships at the center of his career and suggests others to do the same. Because as he argues, in this information age it is not about what we know, but who we know. We have to learn how to build a network and get the information we need through that network. Getting information directly from people that have accomplished what we want to accomplish is extremely valuable and is not to be just found on Google.
Tim Ferris, a successful author, entrepreneur and self proclaimed ‘human guinea pig’, has a similar approach. Based on the area of his life he wants to work on he chooses the people he surrounds himself with. Whether the area is physical, emotional, psychological, or financial he finds the right people and hangs out with them for a couple of months, until he decides its time to move on to something new.
What we can learn from successful people is that we have to be be extremely picky with our time. Every minute spent with someone, is a minute we are not spending with someone else. And our time is valuable. So its better to spend it on people that help us achieve our goals.
On the other hand, relationship building takes time, so also be sure to invest the time.
How to get started?
So think about your friends and colleagues: do they inspire you, validate you, or drag you down?
I’m not so much an advocate of just cutting friends out of our lives, like Gary Vaynerchuck suggests we should do. But I think we should rather be grateful for them, because they brought us to where we are. What I think we should do is to start surrounding ourselves with the people that share our passions and values, and help us realize personal goals.
In the end it is all about finding a balance, because also having your critics is important for the challenging and validation of your assumptions.
I love this quote by the fighter Frank Shamrock who says that we all need the +, -, =.
Each fighter, to become great, he said, needs to have someone better that they can learn from, someone lesser who they can teach, and someone equal that they may challenge themselves against.
I have found that I really enjoy trying out new things and stepping out of my ‘bubble’ has altered my world view in many ways. I really enjoy meeting people with very different backgrounds or beliefs, trying new hobbies or reading about new things. They challenge my assumptions, make me learn something new and if I like it, I stick with it. I learn something new and improve my life with every person I meet. This has brought me to where I am now, and probably it is not an end station as I will be constantly curious about what else is out there.
In the end I think it is a matter of having clear for yourself what are your goals, communicating what are your goals and values and what you stand for. And then the right people and opportunities will come to you.
