How can the people we spend time with impact our lives?
I am sure that I, along with most if not all the rest of you, were forever told by our parents that “I don’t want you spending time with little Johnny or little Samantha as they are a bad influence on you”. Obviously nothing against Johnny or Samantha and I just use this as an example. We were advised by our parents as they could see how our friends might have moulded us to their way of thinking rather than being the grown up our parents wanted and knew we could become. Yet as adults we tend to do it all the time.
One of the biggest influences in my life and those I know who are far more successful than me are the people we spend our time hanging around with. If we spend time associating with successful or success minded people the chances are it will rub off. Someone once said to me – and they were using Facebook as an example – that if at the end of each year we split those we spend time hanging around with into three groups.
1. Those we spend too much time with who are a constant drain on our lives then we should remove totally from our lives or limit the amount of time we spend with them to very little
2. Those we don’t spend enough time with who are constantly building us up and telling us they believe in us and we can do it, we should be spending more time with these people
3. Those we need to limit our time with. There are those we like as friends and enjoy their company, but we don’t see our lives moving forward with them
I know this might sound harsh but after a couple of years doing this, you will tend to preselect as you go along. If we want to be successful, we need to be spending time with successful people as much as possible and learn from them.
This is a discipline we can start early in life, and I guarantee it will pay dividends
What about the job you do? How can this impact your life?
We all, from time to time, do something we don’t like to do. It could be part of a job you do or could even be an aspect of running your own business. We need to do whatever we need to do and we need to learn from it. Always look at the positives.
Everything we learn in life will teach us something and will lead us somewhere and will help us in the future – if we look at it the right way. You may be in a job that you don’t particularly like, but I guarantee you will learn something from it, and that something could be very valuable in a future job or business.
If you are on the phone regularly, you are building relationships and learning how to communicate properly. If you are in a face to face environment as in retail, you are understanding a customer’s needs and how best to deal with them. You too are building relationships. You have to look at how this experience can benefit you in the future, rather than think “What a waste of time”. If your thinking is right, it will help you to progress in the future.
People buy people. They always have done and they always will. We don’t buy companies. We buy people
TAKE THE POSITIVES FROM EVERY EXPERIENCE AND EVERY RELATIONSHIP AND USE THEM TO HELP YOU GROW
For more help and advice on how to build a successful business, contact Richard “Lionheart” Knight
This article was first published on LinkedIn by Richard Knight on 10/02/2020