The Company You Keep

The Quest for Personal Achievement

So many people today find it so hard to get ahead in life, to be able to achieve the goals they want to achieve, to be able to have the relationships they want to have, to be able to earn what they are capable of earning, to feel physically powerful and energized, AND to feel mentally sharp and stimulated. And when you ask them why aren’t they achieving these things? Why aren’t they thinking and feeling this way? Most of the time they will tell you, “Well, I just don’t have the time to do these things.” That is always their #1 Excuse – I just don’t have the time. And it is just THAT – an EXCUSE.

Unlocking Time: The First Step to Overcoming Excuses

I’ve worked with literally thousands of people over the years and helped them find the 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and an hour or more in their day that they said if they had they could make a tremendous positive difference in their lives. Time to learn more, be proactive, exercise, and spend with their family, friends, or loved ones. And yet, over 80% of them just fill this new-found time with the same ‘junk’ that has been holding them back from really achieving meaningful progress in their lives.

The Influence of Company on Personal Growth

But there is one important thing many people overlook that holds them back from making real progress – and that is the Company That They Keep. It is the people that are around them that they spend the most time with – that oftentimes keep them from being as personally powerful as they are capable of being and becoming, AND as personally fulfilled as they want to be. And here is something else - they are usually COMPLETELY unaware of it.

The True Value of Friendship in Achieving Success

When you ask most people who are their closest friends; they will start rattling off a list of several names. But the reality is that most people in life are lucky, truly lucky, to have really close friends and supporters – those people who motivate you, who inspire you, who you feel close enough to share your true aspirations and goals with, and who will support you in a positive way to achieve them. Most people are lucky to have even one person like that in their life, much less several.

The Impact of Surroundings on Personal Ambitions

When you really examine your ‘friends’ and the people in your life who fulfill those intrinsic needs and make you a better person, you may realize that you really don’t have ANYONE in your life like that. So it is no wonder why so many people struggle to achieve the things they claim they want out of life when they don’t have any support structure to help them get there.

In fact, what I have found is that many people today are spending most of their time with folks who are actually holding them back and inhibiting them from moving forward. And I don’t mean that in a negative way necessarily in that your ‘friends’ may be intentionally bad or harmful because it is usually totally unconscious and not subversive. It is just that the way they live THEIR LIVES and the things that THEY FOCUS on, are not ALIGNED with your goals and ambitions; and they are holding you back.

The Power of Influence: Understanding Your Social Circle

Jim Rohn said ‘You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.’

Think about that. That is such a simple but powerful concept – ‘I am the average of the five people I spend the most time with.’ Others around me directly influence and determine how I think, how I act, how I am motivated, and ultimately how successful I will be in achieving my goals and ambitions. And it is logical that who you hang out with the most and who you choose to spend most of your time with will have a direct influence and impact on how YOU use YOUR time and what you achieve in life.

Self-Reflection: The First Step to Personal Growth

So how can you determine how this concept is directly impacting you? Well, it is really a simple two-part exercise and it starts with this.

Set aside some time and just write down the names of the people that you spend most of the week with. If you are married or in a relationship, obviously that person will be one. It may be family members. More than likely a couple of these people will be those that you work with. It may be certain people between Monday through Friday and totally different people on weekends.

Think about whom YOU SEEK OUT to spend the most time with and come up with your list, then narrow it down to the 5 you spend the MOST time with of all. It can only be 5 and it really shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to figure this out.

Evaluating Your Core Circle

The second part of the exercise is this: for each of these five people, ask yourself the following:

What do they do with their lives?

• How ambitious are they?
• How successful have they been?
• How happy, optimistic, and enthusiastic are they?
• Do they push you forward and always motivate you when you come to them with new ideas?
• Or do they tend to be pessimistic and tell you that what you have in mind won't work or immediately focus on the risks or downsides?
• Do they spend a lot of time talking about others?
• Will they keep you going during the challenging times?

Identifying Your Circle: The "4 Outs" Framework

Now, most of the time, you can quickly identify where those 5 people fall in the answers to these questions, but if you have some trouble, let me give you a simple method to figure it out.

The simple way I use is to categorize those 5 individuals into one of four buckets that I call ‘The 4 Outs’.

The Detrimental Ones: Cop Outs and Hold Outs

The first group are people that I call ‘The Cop Outs’. These are the easiest to spot because they are always pessimistic and have an excuse for everything.

They use lots of clichés like, ‘The Rich Get Richer’, ‘It’s not what you know, but who you know’ or the best one is when someone does something good or achieves something, they will dismiss it by saying ‘It was just luck’ or ‘They were in the right place at the right time’. Hopefully, nobody in your circle of five is like this because they will drag you down with them.

The second group is called ‘The Hold Outs’. These folks are not quite as bad as Cop Outs in that they don’t wear on you as badly, but they are just as dangerous because they keep you from moving forward.

Hold Outs are people who will SAY they want to get ahead, but they won’t take any ACTION until everything is just right. Conditions need to be perfect for them before taking that first step. They will have LOTS of excuses why they never got started and JUSTIFY their lack of action because of circumstances or that things were too risky at the time. But they will be the FIRST to complain when they miss their opportunity. They are the coulda, shoulda, woulda crowd.

The Unreliable Ones: Drop Outs

The third group is ‘The Drop Outs’, and sometimes they can be the most dangerous in your circle. These are people who APPEAR to be generally supportive and enthusiastic; and willing to start new things or encourage you, but they are ALSO the ones who will lose steam and gradually give up or move on to something new when faced with adversity; or when the going starts to get tough; or when they just get bored with whatever they started.

They will start the new exercise program and be super motivated and into it for a couple of months, then drop out. They will try the new diet and be really focused at first, and then they start to slide and give up.

When I work with companies on improving their hiring of salespeople, I find that The Drop Outs are the ones they need to be aware of the most. They are ALWAYS the best interviewers and say ALL the right things. They come in all fired up and supportive, but when they start to miss quota, they blame everyone and everything but themselves. You need to REALLY WATCH OUT for these people because they will always hold you back from reaching your full potential, and most of the time you won’t know it.

The Role Models: All Outs

The people you really want to have in your Circle of 5 are The All Outs. These are the people who are unstoppable! They are ALWAYS positive BUT realistic. They aren’t always big ‘rah-rah’ people because Drop Outs can be that way most of the time, but they are the ones who will be brutally honest with you and will do whatever it takes to achieve their objectives.

They set goals and focus the majority of their efforts on achieving them. They see OPPORTUNITIES where others only see risks and hard work. They are CONSISTENT achievers. They inspire you, motivate you, make you smarter, AND keep you focused and positive.

In sales, these are ALWAYS the Elite Salespeople, the Top 7% who are successful no matter the circumstances. They NEVER give up when challenges appear. And here’s something you will notice - they don’t hang around with the masses.

It’s not that they're rude or elitist; it is simply that they are focused and aware of the people that are around them. They don’t get caught up in other people’s insignificance.

Making the Right Choices for Your Circle

Now let me tell you what you can expect from doing this exercise. You may find that only 1 or 2 people out of the 5 are the ones you should be spending the most time with. There have been times I have worked with someone and they realized that they didn’t have ANYONE like that in their Circle of 5, but they knew people that should be in their circle. So what should you do if that happens?

First, you must make a conscious choice of who is on your list. If the people that are there now aren’t the people you need to meet the standard of excellence you want or will help you with the behaviors you need support, then you must decrease the time you spend with them. It is as simple as that.

If you hang out with people who have no ambition, you’ll have no ambition. If you hang out with critical people, you’ll become critical. If you hang out with people who have little empathy towards others, you will be apathetic.

The people you spend the most time around will influence what you’re like on a day-to-day basis. Don’t be afraid to lose the support or friendship of these people, because if they are truly your friends and truly supportive, they will be accepting, understanding, and appreciative of you. If not, then they probably shouldn’t have had a significant part of your life to begin with.

And don’t be surprised if some become critical. That is a normal response from small-minded people because jealousy does breed contempt and envy.

Remember; most people don’t have lots of FRIENDS, they have lots of ACQUAINTANCES. BIG DIFFERENCE. Unfortunately, Facebook has detrimentally defined what a ‘friend’ is for many people.

So instead of becoming the ‘average’ of a lot of average people, aspire to rise above. Take a portion of the time you were spending with them and focus on identifying those people you KNOW or CAN GET TO KNOW that WILL inspire you, who have focus and determination, who make you smarter and more powerful.

Don’t worry if you only have 1 or 2 people to start with. You aren’t going to establish this new Circle of 5 right away. But if you focus your ENERGIES on finding them, I promise you will find them. It is the 6 Degrees of Separation theory, which says that everyone and everything is JUST six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any person in the world.

You are truly just six steps away from encircling yourself with those 5 people who will help you achieve your MAXIMUM personal power and potential. So make it a priority THIS WEEK to perform this exercise and start spending just 15 minutes a week doing what is necessary to positively influence the company you keep.