When I was growing up, my mother used to tell me, “Show me who your friends are, and you show me who you are.” It was her way of telling me to be careful who I hung out with.
The Happiness Cluster
I wrote a book a while ago about designing a life worth smiling about, and it was based on scientific research behind the neurology of smiling. In my research, I read a lot about a study conducted at Harvard Universitythat focused on something called “the happiness cluster.” This study revealed that happy people hung out with other happy people, and unhappy people gravitated toward other unhappy people.
It didn’t just stop there, though. Successful people were more inclined to hang out with other successful people, while people who found themselves struggling complained that they were stuck hanging out with others who found themselves in the same position.
What’s My Point?
Our happiness, our success in business and even our finances have a lot to do with the people we spend our time with. Not only do you absorb their positive energy, but you feed your own into it as well. You feed your creativity into the group, and you might say things like, “This is an exciting idea. Let’s figure out how we can make this work.”
Struggling people, on the other hand, will feed their negativity to others. Those conversations sound more like this: “I can’t believe this is happening to me again.” They become the victim of their own life rather than the creator of their own life.
Onward and Upward
If you truly want to reach the Next Level® in your life, take an honest look at the people you spend your time with. Are they people you would take advice from? I’ll tell you this. As a newlywed, I would not take marriage advice from someone who had never been married or married and divorced several times. Parents would never take parenting advice from someone who never had children. Investors would never take advice from someone who had been bankrupt more times than they could count on their fingers.
Go out and find those people who are successful and who have reached the point you strive to reach in your own life. Those are the people you should be spending your time with because those are the people who will positively impact your life.
Darryl Davis has trained and coached more than 100,000 agents globally. He is the best-selling author of “How to Become a Power Agent® in Real Estate,” which tops Amazon’s charts for most-sold book to real estate agents. Davis hosts a weekly webinar to help agents succeed in changing times. Visit www.DarrylSpeaks.com/Online-Training.
