Your Environment and Five Closest Friends

05.04.2017 |

Episode #7 of the course Confidence: The secret to your success! by Eileen Purdy

 

We are greatly influenced—whether we like it or not—by those closest to us. They affect our way of thinking, our decisions, and even our confidence. Of course, everyone is their own person, but research has shown that we’re more affected by our environment than we think. So let’s dive into this a little deeper.

There are a few main areas of your life to consider. Think about family, friends, work, and school. You tend to adopt roles or ways of acting depending on the group you are with. Everyone does. Sometimes the roles are consistent across the board, but often they are different. For example, you may be the funny, outgoing one with your friends but the awkward, shy one at work. With your family you may be the responsible one and at school you may be the athletic one.

Within these areas, you also have a confidence level in each. Think of your family and work or school. Consider your level of confidence in each. How would you rank your confidence within each group on a scale of 1-5 (1 being non-existent and 5 being total boss)? Are they consistent? If not, can you identify what may be different?

If you have discovered that your confidence is low in certain environments, you’ll improve it by applying the skills from this course. There is one influential dynamic, however, that I’d like to bring your awareness to. Environments like to keep their status quo and are resistant to things that threaten change.

So be ready for some pushback if you realize that you aren’t as confident as you’d like to be with your family and want to change that. Remind yourself that it is the nature of the family system to want everyone to stay the same. If they give you a hard time, do the 4-7-8 breath and carry on. Likewise, at work, if you start embracing your confidence, expect that some co-workers may resist a little and possibly see you as rocking the boat. Again, continue forward on your confidence journey.

To add another dimension, renowned entrepreneur John Rohn went a step further and coined the phrase, “You’re the average of your five closest friends.” You may have heard other sayings teaching us to be aware of who we spend our time with, like “Birds of a feather flock together” or “You can know a man by the company that he keeps.”

While there are certainly multiple factors that affect your confidence, it’s hard to avoid the influence of the people you see, work with, or talk to regularly. And this is true even if you are aware of it. So think about who you spend most of your time with. Do they lift you up? Support you? Inspire you to be better?

If not, is there a way you can arrange to spend more time with people who do and will be a positive influence on you?

Only you can assess your current environment. Identifying the five people you spend most of your time with isn’t meant to turn into a judgmental activity toward them. It is a way to help you zero in on potential obstacles to growing your confidence. You are putting a great deal of effort toward increasing your confidence, and you deserve to know how to safeguard it!

Today’s action assignment is to list the five people you spend most of your time with in general. Rate how you think they influence your confidence on a scale of 1-5 (1 being confidence drain and 5 being confidence boost).

Tomorrow you’ll learn how to keep getting back on the horse. Translation: how to overcome setbacks.

 

Recommended book

“Confidence: How to Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs and Achieve Your Goals” by Martin Meadows

 

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