Surround Yourself with People that Stretch You

There is a famous phrase that underscores the importance of who you keep in your immediate orbit, “Your network is your net worth.”  Elaborating further on this thought; your Inner circle determines outer results. 

Whether we choose to believe it or not, the people we spend the majority of our time around have an outsize influence on how we perceive the world, what goals we strive for, and what type of self-imposed limitations we are setting.  When we were children, our parents were largely the arbiters of our reality.  We took our cues from them as to how to navigate through the big, unfamiliar world via the boundaries they set for us.  Growing into adulthood, responsibility for defining those boundaries falls to us as individuals; but who are we influenced by?

As we mature, we still look outside of ourselves for guidance and direction.  The most common direction we look for comes from our friends, colleagues, peers, and others we identify as familiar to us because it helps us feel like we aren’t alone in facing the many diverse challenges that maturity brings.  

As a consequence, the inputs that come from those people are very powerful ones because how they think, how they speak, and how they act provides a framework that we internalize and adapt as a version of our own. This is significant and impactful to our lives and productivity; more so than we may think even as adults.

For example, if you spend the majority of your time at the office commiserating with co-workers who are always complaining about how much they hate their job and how toxic the corporate culture is, those negative thoughts can’t help but begin to seep in.  In doing so, they color your own perception of the work environment you are in, and even if you don’t agree on the surface with what they are saying, you are saddling your brain with the additional task of filtering out what is true and what isn’t all the while wasting precious mental energy that could be channeled to more productive tasks.  In the end, not only will this impact your success in your career but may also likely seep into your personal life and the inherent choices and actions you make as a result.

For another illustration of the importance of surrounding yourself with people that stretch you, this is especially critical when it comes to keeping friends around who no longer empower or support you like they once did.  In these instances, you lean on memories of time well spent in the past to justify continued engagement in the present although it is clear you are now on two very different paths.  This is the “friend” that spends most of their time gossiping about others, arguing politics, worrying about the latest post they saw on Facebook, doing nothing to better their lives.  You feel like you’ve moved forward, but you are afraid to leave them behind.  The problem is by doing so you are staying behind with them, stuck living in the past and failing to escape their negative gravitational pull. 

So, what is the alternative?  Seek to develop relationships, build alliances, and strengthen ties with people who are already where you want to be or are headed in the same direction.  Open yourself up to the wisdom of older mentors who have walked the path before you as well as the enthusiasm that young, hungry peers can provide to keep the fire lit under you.  

When you realize you have not even begun to scratch the surface of your true potential, lean on that network to redefine what is possible, to show you what you can become, and to compel you to spend time beyond the boundaries of what you believed you could accomplish.  Apply the pressure.  Go harder than you are going right now.  Foot on the gas.  No brakes.  You aren’t even in the stratosphere of your maximum potential.   

It is only by surrounding yourself with those types of people that you can leverage their collective wisdom in service of a better life, and eliminate the mental chains that other less ambitious people are trying to saddle you with.  You don’t have to live a life of scarcity if you choose not to, but a key piece of tapping into that abundance is finding the right people to accompany you on your journey.