Change Your Circle Today and Change Your Future
►Avoid people who bring you down.
You simply can’t hang around whiners, gripers, complainers, blamers, and losers and expect them to have a positive impact on you, your self-esteem, your motivation, your goal achievement, or anything else. They literally endanger your future.
Unfortunately, if you tilt a bit to the negative side of life, chances are very good that you find other people who tilt to the negative as well. After all, you can “relate” to each other or feel like you “understand” each other.
That’s why it’s no accident that kids with bad grades spend most of their time with other kids who get bad grades. Couples with marriage problems have friends with marriage problems. And so it goes, on and on and on.
Is that a big deal? Absolutely! Because there are only two kinds of people in the world. Those who lift you up and those who bring you down.
A lot of people don’t realize this. When I coach people, I’ve noticed that they’ll often blame their problems on their circumstances. They’ll say, for example, that the economy is bad; their company is downsizing, and change is everywhere.
In reality, it may be the people in their lives that are causing the most difficulty. I teach them that good circumstances with bad friends usually result in defeat, while bad circumstances with good friends usually result in victory.
You’ve got to choose your associations wisely. You can’t just go to anyone or listen to anyone, because who you pick may determine what you do.
Take away? You can’t afford to spend too much time with people who bring you down. You may need to change your circle today if you want a better future tomorrow.
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►1. Spend more time with encouragers. Change Your Circle
As I said above, you’ve got to be extremely cautious about spending too much time with negative people or losers in life. If you don’t release these kinds of people or keep your distance, you’ll end up resembling them.
Lou Holtz, the famous football coach, drove that point home for me. He told me,
“If you go to people who never did anything or accomplished anything, they will tell you that you can’t do it. But if you go to those who have accomplished a lot, they’ll give you encouragement.”
Put another way, make sure you have some people in your life who serve as “sideliners.”
That’s what they do in the Special Olympics. And it works. Each athlete has a sideliner (someone on the sidelines) who showers him or her with praise and encouragement. And as a result, the athlete is able to overcome feelings of inadequacy and discover their full potential.
Do you have one or more sideliners in your life? I hope so. As I study successful people, I find very few of them are “self-made” successes. Almost every highly successful person has had a sideliner in his life.
If you’ve got a sideliner, great. If you need one, get one. And if you’re wondering what to look for or whether or not your present associations qualify as sideliners, let me suggest these guidelines.
►2. Sideliners comfort you.
They see that you’re hurt when others don’t notice. And they offer solid proof of your worth. When you’re doubting yourself, they remind you how good you really are.
As a professional speaker, I am occasionally discouraged by attendees who don’t care or won’t try anything I teach–even though I know it will work for them. That’s when my wife will remind me of all the grateful attendees and memorable letters of thanks I’ve received over the years. She provides comfort as she helps me gain a more balanced, more realistic perspective.
►3. Sideliners don’t kick you when you’re down.
Unfortunately, many people do. When you’re in the midst of setback or failure, many people will tell you how stupid you were or what you should have done. Others will avoid you.
By contrast, sideliners accept you even if they don’t agree with you. They can see that your life might not be in the best of shape, but they assume the best about you. They assume your intentions are good, even though they may disagree with your opinions and disapprove of your actions.
That’s how I got through to the inmates when I worked in a juvenile reformatory years ago. The inmates were robbers, muggers, pimps, and drug dealers, and it would have been easy to lecture them about all the stupid choices they had made. What they needed, however, was someone to assume the best about them or see the potential in them. Then they could start to make the changes they needed to make.
►4. Sideliners don’t keep track of hurts.
They know that wouldn’t serve any useful purpose.
Relationships that are going to stay together and stay positive require lots of forgiveness.
It’s like the husband who fell asleep while driving. His wife suffered severe injuries. When she awakened after surgery, he cried and told her how sorry he was.
“Let’s not worry about it,” she whispered. As she took his hand, she said, “I’m sure I’ve hurt you many times without meaning to.”
Later, the wife told her friend, “I knew he didn’t do it on purpose. Blaming him would have poisoned our marriage.”
She was a sideliner. She didn’t keep track of hurts and as a result, her actions ensured a lasting and healthy relationship.
►5. Sideliners take you and your dreams seriously.
They don’t tell you that “that will never work.”
Sideliners treat your dreams with courtesy and respect. They listen as you share your dreams and they encourage you to pursue what’s most important to you. And when asked, they offer their wisdom and guidance.
In fact, I would wager that a great deal of where you are right now in life, work, or relationships can be traced to people in your past who took you and your dreams seriously … or dismissed them.
If you were fortunate to have sideliners who validated you and your dreams, you are indeed blessed. Be thankful. If you were around people who ignored or ridiculed you or your dreams, you’ve been held back from realizing your full potential. Let go of those people or let go of their influence, and find some new sideliners with whom to associate.
Final Thought: Take a quick assessment of the people you hang around. Do they lift you up or bring you down? If you’ve got too many downers in your circle, change your circle today and you will change your future.
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