You Are the People You Hang Around With
Look Around at Your Five Closest Friends and That’s Who You Are
At some point or another, you’ve probably come across the saying…
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.’
I believe Jim Rohn, the personal development speaker, popularized this idea.
And to be fair there is some truth to it, because our brains are wired to adapt to our social environment.
You could say that each and every single one of us, is a product of our surroundings and if you need proof, just listen to how someone speaks because this often tells you where they are from.
I’m actually a perfect example of this because if you were to judge me solely on my skin color, you’d probably assume that I am Indian.
Yet, culturally there is nothing ‘Indian’ about me as I was raised in a small, working-class town in England.
If you were to put me in India today, the locals more than likely wouldn’t accept me as one of their own.
My example illustrates how your environment shapes your identity.
So before we dive into the main talking points, it’s also worth noting that your environment isn’t just the people around you physically.
It’s also the people you follow online because whether you like to admit it or not, they are influencing you, for better or for worse.
#1 Behaviors and Mindsets Are Contagious
A great way to explain this is to use a sporting example, as this is what many people will relate to.
So just imagine, for a second, a soccer player on a mid-table team. This team never finish at the top, but at the same time they finish at the bottom either, season after season, they remain somewhere in the middle.
Then, a top-tier team spots potential in one of their players and signs him up.
After a brief settling period—about five or six months—you notice a major improvement in this player’s performance while playing for his new team.
His natural ability hasn’t changed.
What has changed is his environment.
He is now surrounded by better coaches and better players, and the expectations within his new group are much higher.
In other words, his environment forced him to improve; it had nothing to do with his raw talent.
And this makes perfect sense because attitudes, behaviors, and mindsets do rub off on people.
If you hang around with winners who succeed, that mindset will influence you.
Conversely, if you surround yourself with people who lose on a regular basis, that negative pattern can also rub off on you too.
The company you keep is incredibly important.
#2 Beliefs Are Subconsciously Influenced
If you actually look at the word “culture,” the word “cult” is right there in it.
And, this is telling.
Because if you look at people from different social class backgrounds, different subcultures, and even different religions, what you’ll tend to notice is that they dress the same way, talk the same way, and act the same way.
Keyword here is tend.
As I mentioned in the introduction, we are all products of our environment.
For example, when I was in school, there were two dominant subcultures:
The “chavs” on one side and the “moshers” and “goths” on the other.
For those outside the UK, a “chav” is basically someone who comes from a low-income background and tends to engage in antisocial behavior. Musically, they listen to hardcore dance music, drum and bass, or hip hop.
Clothing-wise, they wear sportswear.
Moshers, on the other hand, were into metal music. They tended to have piercings, grow their hair long, wear baggy clothing, and dress entirely in black.
When I was in school, those were the two dominant subcultures.
Now, I know a lot of people might say what I’m saying is a bit old-fashioned or just stereotyping. But to be fair, you can tell a lot about a person by the people they hang around with.
At the end of the day, people tend to associate with others similar to themselves; it’s just human nature.
There is a lot of truth to the saying, “Birds of a feather flock together.”
#3 We Want to Fit In
What you’ll tend to find is that as you grow older and become a lot more comfortable in your own skin, the need and drive to fit in subsides.
It’s still there—it never really goes away—but it’s nowhere near as strong as, say, it was when you were a kid or a teenager.
When you’re a kid/teenager, sometimes you will do stupid things just to be accepted by the group.
We’ve all been there, we basically all want to fit in.
And if you look at this from an evolutionary psychology perspective, it’s basically a survival mechanism.
Think about what would have happened during our hunter-gatherer days, if the group abandoned us, we probably would have died.
So, it is in our best interest to be part of a group. You could say that we (humans) are herd animals.
This is why kids and teenagers especially, will do dumb stuff just to be accepted by their peers.
#4 The Groups Trajectory Impacts Yours
I touched on this in the first point when I was talking about that soccer player initially playing for a mid-table team, then moving to another team that’s higher up the table, and then improving as a result.
It’s basically the power of proximity
Because he’s around better players, it improves him.
But let’s use another example to drive this point home:
You could have a poor person who’s been poor for a large portion of his life and let’s say you put that poor person around five rich people, and let’s say he spends a significant amount of time with these rich people.
What would probably end up happening is that poor person would end up changing.
He would more than likely end up becoming rich himself, because like I said earlier, mindsets, values, attitudes, behaviors, etc., are contagious.
And this works both ways.
For example, you could have a guy who’s never done drugs in his life, never drunk alcohol, basically lived a clean, healthy life.
And then you put him around people who drink and take drugs on a regular basis.
I’m pretty sure that guy would probably start drinking and maybe start doing drugs just because of the people that he’s hanging around with.
Just think about it for a second—in that drinking and drug culture environment, that’s the standard behavior.
That’s the behavior that’s acceptable within that group.
So the overall point of this article, is choose your friends/associates wisely, because you are being influenced whether you like it or not.
This is just just something to be VERY mindful of.