Who You Surround Yourself Matters

Who you surround yourself with matters. That bears repeating. Who you surround yourself with matters.

When you are riding the entrepreneur roller coaster, you feel the rush, the speed, the highs, the lows. You run the gamut of emotions. There are very few level areas. Who you choose to surround yourself with can compound these emotions.

I’ve heard it from the likes of Jim Rohn and Brian Tracy that you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. If you surround yourself with negative people, guess how you’re going to feel. If you surround yourself with failures, the tendency will be to follow suit and fit in. When you surround yourself with people that are financially lacking, you’ll tend to justify reasons why it’s ok to be poor too.

This is hardly conducive to building a success driven environment. If you want to succeed, make that thrive, in business, you need to be around the right people all the time. If you hang around successful people, you can’t help but learn some tricks, tactics, strategies, philosophies, that will help with your business. You will pick up on their work ethic, their attitude, their financial strategies.

It’s like playing sports. I’m Canadian so i’m going to use hockey as my example. I know, you’re shocked. When you play with people that aren’t as good as you, the tendency is to slow down, play at their level, and make them feel better. When you play with players that are better than you, you push your boundaries. You skate full out every shift until you’re on the bench throwing up in the garbage can. (Not that i’ve ever done that) You’re only option is to push yourself harder than you ever thought possible. You “play up”.

Through the process of playing up, you can’t help but improve. Your skating gets faster and more fluid. Your passes more crisp. Your shot gets harder. You become an all around better player.

When you play down, eventually you diminish your skills. Instead of getting faster, you get more leisurely in your stride. Your passes get soft, you don’t want to knock anyone over. Your shot gets weak, you don’t want to hurt the goalie.

Now I challenge you, in your business and in your life, to go find players that will elevate the level of your game by playing with. These are your new  line mates. This is your new team. If your team is not the one that will help you win a championship, keep looking for new players until you do.