Motivational speaker Jim Rohn said “You Are The Average Of The Five People You Spend The Most Time With”, whilst there is truth to this, it’s not entirely true and not in the way that you think.
Broaden 5 People to many people you spend time with and importantly to me is where you spend effort or focus.
Let me start with a quick explanation of the latter part. Effort and focus.
ROE = return on effort, so zero effort equals zero return.
ROF = return on focus, zero focus equals being undirected.
We see it bigger than “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”
You’re not the average of the five people you surround yourself with. It’s way bigger than that. You’re the average of all the people who surround you and where you focus your efforts, attitude and ambition.
Most people are stuck in habit, habit that they don’t actually know or realise is bad for them, they go about life with a routine that is not conducive to achieving their goals, wants and desires. They spend there time wishing and yearning for the life they want, but have no clear focus and make no real effort. Unfortunately this happens not out of choice, but simply by the way they lived life. With no external sources to show them, a closed circle of people surrounding them with similar thinking, there way of life becomes the norm.
So where to from here – Here being stuck
The people you spend the most time with, the mindset and efforts you put towards your goals will shape who you are and what you will achieve. These will determine what conversations dominate your attention. They will be what attitudes and behaviors you are regularly exposed to. This is the start of the journey, spending more time with the people who you see value in. It could also be reading, courses, classes and dropping old habits. It’s spending time with, where or on what you want to learn from. Eventually you will start to think like they think, think like you have read or studied and then need to adjust your behavior towards focus and effort. FYI, effort is not always doing, often it’s learning, mentoring, observing etc.
Remember, what you make no effort towards you cannot achieve, and yes, more often than not, that effort can be focus as well as spending time with those you want to learn from.
Begin with habit identification
What habits do you have in life that are counter productive to what you want from life. In my own experience, I’ve often needed to do the exact opposite of what I wanted to do (or used to do) to be able to move forward. It took grit, both motivation and dedication to stay the course for my habits to change.
Ever heard the phrase creature of habit, it means a person who follows an unvarying routine. If you say that someone is a creature of habit, you mean that they usually do the same thing at the same time each day, week, month. The same goes for thinking.
Be more
To be more and to get more from life, I am going to have to change my habits.
Reads the line above a few times, and I hope it starts you on your journey of change
