126. The Five People You Surround Yourself With

Uplevel Your Life By Up leveling Your Peers

Motivational speaker Jim Rohn is credited with the quote loved by self help junkies like us, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

In this week’s episode, Sammie and I take a look at this idea, that you are the average of the five people you spend time with. It’s something that we believe to be true.

Of course, people you spend a lot of time with are going to have an influence you. When I was in San Francisco, I had friends who were my age that were taking a chance on themselves by trying to launch a startup. Seeing that showed me that you can try different paths in life that aren’t necessarily a nine to five job. This would influence me years later when I would make the decision to leave the corporate world indefinitely.

If you take an audit of the people you’re spending time with, are you happy with their influence? This includes our family, friends, coworkers and even parasocial relationships that we have with podcasts we listen to our influencers we follow.

Here’s a few things Sammie and I find to be important when we are evaluating the people we surround ourselves with.

1. Diversity: It’s so nice to have friends, peers and content creators around us who are not necessarily the same as us. With our close friends, it’s easy to fall into the trap of watching the same things, reading the same books and not exposing ourselves to new ideas or types of people. By intentionally getting to know different people, we are always learning new things from others around us.

2. Include a mentor: If there’s something you are working to improve, it’s great to find someone ahead of you on your dream path to be able to get some help and insight in your journey. We have podcast mentors who give us feedback on each episode and help us tweak little things so that we can constantly be evolving.

3. Be the best version of yourself: Life attracts like! If you want to attract people who are aligned with your values, it’s important to also live those values. When I was unhappy at my job, I’d complain to my coworker. Our friendship was built on negativity. I realized I was attracting negative people because I was complaining and would listen to complaining. When I changed my attitude, I was able to find peers who may have had complaints, but focused on the things they could control.

4. Know your values: The best way to build community is to find people who share similar values. Part of that is knowing what your values are! For me, I love having positive and supportive people in my life. I look for that anytime I meet someone new.

   

   Show Notes

5. “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” - Jim Rohn

6. “Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.”― Tony Robbins

7. Who You Spend Time With Matters by Ryan Holiday

8. The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings

9. Values Quiz

Community Shout Outs: Thank you to…

• Nate Bleadorn for sharing the piece America’s Big City Brain Drain

• Kelly Davis for thinking of our sabaddies and jobbie mindset in this tweet

• Ishan Shanavas and Rationalyst for discussing our podcast in these tweets and also to Randy for chiming in as well!