Show me who hang with and I’ll show you who you are. There’s a hysterical excerpt from Chris Rock’s standup comedy routine, that is permanently engraved in my smart-funny-ain’t-that-the-truth-file—you’ll never see a crack-head with a church-goer in a relationship, but a crack-head and another crack-head will always get along. Like attracts like in all relationships. So the old adage of your Mother yelling at you for hanging out with “that girl Sue,” who’s smoking cigarettes and joy-riding in cars at age 15, did have a purpose—show me who you spend your time with and there’s your future. According to several research studies, our lifestyle (health, income, marriage, interests, emotional stability, etc) is the average of the five adult people we hang out with the most—yes, that includes your spouse. Go ahead, pick’em, sum up their incomes and there you have it—a tangible proof source of your current income, or where your income is headed. What’s interesting in this equation, is that you’ll begin to recognize that there are certain folks that you may be bringing up or others that may be bringing you down, or vice versa. In my early twenties, my friend-average was somewhere between my self-centered, status-prone, “friend,” who worked at a large financial company, and called me when she felt I was worthy of her presence; to my amazing husband, who worked on Wall Street for twelve years and one of the sweetest guys, you’ll ever meet—the income average may have been pretty good, but the weak link was bringing my self-esteem average down. Now here’s where I start to get some backtalk from folks—”Are you trying to tell me to stop hanging out with Mookey from the block because I’ve known them for 103 years and he’s family.” No, you don’t have to stop hanging out with Mookey, but maybe make a conscious effort to add some other people into your life. In the past year, I’ve developed a great relationship with a couple that are vegans (and no it’s not a miserable existence of eating salads to my surprise). They taught me some amazing ideas about how to view and treat food, which has brought down my cholesterol. For the long run, I believe they may have even contributed towards adding years to my life, but two years ago, I would’ve never thought to try and know them. If any part of your life is looking like the stock market (consistently unstable), then maybe it’s time to add some expertise and advice to your association pool and benchmarking with some folks that have the fruit on the tree–how about Mom and Dad with 30 years of marriage under their belt? A co-worker that seems to not work so hard, but still gets awesome results? A CPA that’s has millions in their financial portfolio? A neighbor in excellent shape who runs on purpose without anyone chasing them? Say hello and get the friendship going. I’d like to hear from you–who do you like to hang with?
RECOMMENDED BOOK:
THE ART OF PERSUASION: WINNING WITHOUT INTIMIDATION—BOB BURG
This book has alot of valuable inputs about human behavior and “Know How” of people skills and persuasion. Bob has a way of communicating the point across and he has done a great job in this book. He talks in depth about the subjects such as: How we humans act out of emotions and not logic, how we make decisions, how to motivate the unmotivated, how to make the best out of being around someone we absolutely do not like, the power of edification, and so much more.
bookwormholes 