How Those Around You Influence Your Success

Let's talk about those who influence your success... or don't.

Imagine you grew up in a household of lazy underachievers. Now imagine you grew up in the household of high achievers. Do you think you'd be different depending upon the home you grew up in?

If your family cheered you on, encouraging you to be your best, you probably left home feeling confident about yourself.

If your family was negative, chances are you struggled inwardly about your prospects and your success no matter how talented you are.

You Can Change the Influence of Your Past

You can’t change your past, but you can change the influence it had on you. You do this by surrounding yourself with supportive high-achievers as well as people who believe in you.

Think about the people you know. Are they supportive or non-supportive? Some people pretend to be supportive but then whisper doubts into your ears. That's not support no matter what they may claim.

Find people who support you. 

If you want to succeed in business, find people in your area of interest who can give you support. Yes, they tell you the truth AND they encourage you to reach for your dreams.

If you want to succeed in establishing good relationships, be with people who have good relationshisps

1. Gain access to new people. Those around you can introduce you to new people. One of them may ultimately become your mentor or be the business contact you’ve been searching for.

• Every person you know already knows lots of people that you do not. These people that are unknown to you may become a valuable resource.

1. The people around you can teach you new things. Everyone you know has something to teach you. Are you hanging out with the right people to learn the things you need to know?
2. The people around you influence your attitude and expectations. You can’t help but be influenced by those around you. It has been argued that you can’t rise above the results of the five people you spend the most time with. You can learn a lot about success from your social network.

• Imagine you’re a real estate agent and you’re spending time with the most successful real estate agent in your city. You earned $100,000 last year, and she earned $1,000,000.
• You call five expired listings each day and send 50 postcards each week to potential new clients. You come to learn that your new friend calls every expired listing each day and sends out thousands of postcards each week. She even has two full-time assistants to handle her incredible workload.
• She’s also doing forms of marketing you’ve never even considered.
• Consider how this can change your life. You suddenly realize that you’re not working nearly as hard or as creatively as you could be. You start to wonder what else you could be doing better. It’s an eye-opening experience.

The people around you matter. With whom are you spending your time? Are you choosing to spend time with those that inspire and support you? Are you spending time with people that struggle with life and sabotage your best efforts to excel?

You have to power to choose the people you spend the most time with. Choose intelligently and you’ll experience greater levels of success.