Here’s #4 in my series of Wealth Principles! Who can you count on to tell you the truth when you really need it? Most people would answer “my friends” or “my family”, but if you really think about, it’s often hard to tell the people closest to us the truth about things, because we don’t want to hurt their feelings. Often times, with good intention, a friend or relative will often give you bad advice if you ask them about a business idea or potential investment. Even though they have little or no knowledge or experience in what it is you’re asking about, they’ll often tell you to “be careful” and suggest it is a bad idea. They don’t intend to give you bad advice, and the fact is they’re just try to help you — help you from making a bad decision, and from seeing you get hurt. Unfortunately, many a great idea has been snuffed out by a well-meaning relative or friend when someone asks them what they think about their latest idea. Most people are actually stunted by those close to them, with whom they spend a lot of time. Obviously there are exceptions to this, particularly when you surround yourself with high performance people. But for the most part, if you don’t consciously think about the people you spend time with, it’s possible that your success is being stunted without you even realizing it. A powerful exercise is to think of the 5 people with whom you spend the most amount of time with in your life. Then, take the annual income of each of those people (estimate it if you don’t know each one specifically), and then add them together and divide by 5 to get the average income in that group. I’m willing to bet $100 that the average income you came up with is within 10-20% of your annual income. The powerful message here is, you tend to be similar to those with whom you spend the most of your time. In other words, “birds of a feather flock together”. This is really one of those eye opening revelations that many people have on the way to conscious success, and is a powerful concept to think about. Some people take offense to this exercise, or fear that the conclusion is that they have to eliminate several people from their life. That’s not at all the point – the point is, you need to be conscious of the major influences in your life. If you’re spending a lot of time with people that are not positively contributing to your growth, you need to think about perhaps spending a little less time with those people — and spending more time with those who are operating at a higher level. You always have to double-check who you’re getting advice from, and who’s opinion you’re listening to. From the time we’re small children, we’re all directed to ‘avoid risk’, ‘be careful’, and ‘be realistic’. Unfortunately, this keeps many people mired in mediocrity. Most of the world is out looking for risks and problems, rather than trying to see opportunities. The way I teach this idea is to teach one of my investment rules, which is:
“Only take advice from those who are doing and getting what it is you want to do and get”. So if you’re not where you want to be, and you’re wondering what you can do to increase the level you’re operating at – and achieving at – I’d recommend doing this 5 minute exercise with the 5 people around you, and see whether you need to consciously spend more time around those you want to model.]]>