Who's By Your Side?

Who Are You Influenced By?

It’s ok if you aspire to be the one who influences your circle and not the other way around. And it is certainly possible.

But unconsciously we end up picking a lot of habits and thinking/emotional patterns from the ones we spend the most time with.

This doesn’t mean you can’t spend time with friends and family that you love but that are not on the same committed path as you regarding growth or self-awareness. It simply means you become conscious of how it influences your own process so you can keep evolving without letting your surroundings drag you down.

Although you can aspire to be greater than your environment, and that’s basically what growth is about, it is also wise to choose your environments consciously so you can have your growth, clarity and intentions at the best chance of blossoming.

Settling for your surroundings

It’s common that when you join a new job or a new group, you start accepting their general behaviours as comfortable and acceptable over time, even if before you didn’t resonate or approve them completely. That’s because our mind looks mostly for what’s familiar and for approval.

Over time you will allow yourself to be more like them, you’ll become comfortable doing what they do and picking the habits they have.

There’s two ways of contradicting these unconscious comfort for less desirable habits and ways of thinking received by our surroundings. One is to be so clear about who you want to be that others have less and less influence on the direction you want to go, and the other is to remain conscious of how your surroundings end up influencing you so you can be conscious of the things you give your time and energy to.

Being conscious of who you’re with and what you consume

So much of the transformations we create come from surrounding ourselves with a group or with new information that make us open to a new way of being. It doesn’t necessarily have to be from the people you spend most time with, it can be simply a book, someone you look up to that you don’t even know or any piece of content that allows you to create new ideas for what is possible.

If you’re not surrounding yourself, or at least consuming content, that is inspiring for you and aligned with who you want to be, you will feel yourself slowly becoming comfortable with what’s not so good for you.

When everyone arounds you handle conflict consciously, it easily becomes the normal standard in your mind for how you approach conflict in your life, to the point that someone arguing can become strange to you. In the same way, if you’re in environments where arguing is the only way to handle conflict, it can make your mind believe it’s simply how we should go about conflict.

What we see repeatedly easily becomes comfortable for us, that’s why it is wise to keep investing in connections or consuming content that keeps reminding us of how we want to live and who we want to be.

Connection is priceless

Being obsessed with solely being with highly inspirational people is not healthy either, because connections are not only about what we can extract from others. It’s beautiful to be with friends and family without taking something from them just because we deeply love them or enjoy their company.

In no way being conscious of how our environment and circle influences us should make us cold hearted or solely focused on what we can gain from others, because that would simply invite superficial connections into our lives.

It’s simply wise that we remain aware that we can become comfortable with ways of thinking and habits simply because they are part of what we see as normal and familiar. But you can allow others to be as they are, love them without needing them to change, and in parallel, also invest in connections, books, groups or courses that remind you of who you truly want to be and how you truly want to live.