Your Circle Matters

I want you to think back to when you were growing up as a kid. Whenever you would meet new friends and want to hang out with them for the first time, chances are your parents wanted to meet them as well. They might’ve even wanted to meet their parents. Now, at that time you probably thought it was stupid. What’s the big deal mom, and dad? As I look back I can now however, I can draw a lot of parallels to my adult life, and to whom I choose to put myself around. Of course I don’t have someone telling me to or to not associate myself with certain individuals, but that comes with being independent.

Although many of our parents wouldn’t necessarily force us into not hanging out with a person, they would in the least tell us to be careful. To not do anything stupid, and to only associate ourselves with good people, with good friends. I was reading Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill the other day, and one of the analogies that Napoleon uses is the person who associates himself with crime. At first crime seems wrong and foreign to them, but over time as that person spends more time with criminals, and around crime, it begins to feel normal. Eventually that “good” person turns into a criminal who is just as bad.

Now there’s a very cliché, yet true statement in the field of entrepreneurship. It goes that if you associate yourself with four broke people, you’re bound to be the fifth. The alternative version is that if you associate yourself with for millionaires you’re bound to be the fifth millionaire. What this speaks to is energy, and influence. You see there is no denying the fact that we all are made of energy, we all emit energy and we all can sense energy and are affected by it. Do you notice that whenever certain people walk into a room, the once vibrant room immediately turns dark? That’s because that person is in a negative state of being. But! Thankfully it works both ways. I can think of multiple times where I was in a room that was sad, or rather low energy, and a person walks in with loud laughter and enthusiasm therefore changing the entire attitude.

Speaking of which, I saw this viral video on Twitter the other day; it was of a student who walked into class every single day saying “good morning y’all!” In an extremely enthusiastic, and almost sarcastic manner. It was funny! However at the same exact time it cheered many of the students up. Energy is contagious. When we choose to associate ourselves with anyone, we are immediately affected by their state of being. It could be good, or it can be bad. I choose to believe that if you really want to become successful, or be as some people would call higher status individual, you have to hang around with those specific individuals of influence. If you want to be a millionaire why are you going out and partying with people who smoke and drink like it’s their full-time job? If you want to be a healthy individual, why are you hanging around people who sit and play video games all day? It makes no sense.

Your circle speaks to one part of your environment. Your environment can consist of the place you are living, the images you are seeing, the affirmations that are or are not on the wall, and of course the people who are in that environment. I will have to write an entirely separate blog just on this topic, but for the sake of time I really want you to grasp how important your circle is.

It’s extremely easy to think that your circle is fine, that you will be able to hold your own in that environment, but I hate to break it to you, the chances are you are going to be dragged down to that person‘s level. The law of association is very real. Think of two people, one person is standing on a chair, and the other person is on the ground. If you’ve ever done this exercise you’ll find that it is easier for the person who is on the ground to pull the person on the chair down, versus the other way around. We only have so much energy to give, if we are consistently devoting our time and energy to bringing other people up to our level on a one on one level, what energy will we have to bring our OWN selves up to a new level; to a new height?

Please, do not misinterpret this because I believe in having a positive influence, but I also believe that we have to understand our worth, our value and have to have the self-awareness to know when we are in a bad position. I would rather be able to positively impact 1000 people from a distance, then to have to sit down and have the same impact on one person while sacrificing my own state of being trying to fix them. We cannot fix other people, the only thing that we can do is encourage them to fix themselves and to guide them along and give them advice on what we think they should do. If that person is not willing to fix themselves, all we can do is hope and pray that they establish a sense of awareness and recognize what they need to do to be better.

Protect your energy. Protect your time, and protect your circle. Thank you for reading this, and until next time remember Success Before Rest!

 - Isaac Mashman

Make sure to connect with me on social media @isaacmashman!