Are you Building a Winning Team or running a Daycare Center?

As you go through your life dreaming of going from rags to riches, or of having a wonderful relationship, or even of losing weight and getting healthy, you need to ask yourself if your surroundings are conducive to actually attaining those goals.

Do you work, live, or play in an environment or with a group of people who are constantly building you up and believing in your greatness, or do your surroundings serve instead to remind you of what you don’t want to have in your life?

Always remember that what we focus on in life is what grows. Call it the law of attraction, call in the power of intention – it doesn’t really matter what you call it. The bottom line truth is that it is difficult – if not impossible – not to put your attention and your focus onto the people and the circumstances that surround you. If you are surrounded by immature, belittling people who are not successful in the areas that you want to be successful in, it’s like jumping into a pool and trying not to get wet!

Health and Fitness Success

Most people in today’s world want to clean up some part of their health. They want to eat better, exercise more, lose some weight, etc. That is all well and good, but then they fill their lives with people and information that don’t support that goal!

• How many of your close friends exercise regularly compared to how many of them ask for your time when YOU should be exercising?
• How many of your co-workers bring healthy fare to work instead of dragging you to the nearest fast food restaurant at lunch time?
• How many of your family members are junk-food junkies, or demand your time when you should be at the gym, out on the trail, or working out at home?
• How many books or magazines do you read that reinforce your self-limiting beliefs about weight loss, rather than building you up for success?

Relationship Success

There was an old saying that my father used to have on a plaque that hung on our wall when I was growing up. It said:

“It’s hard to soar like an eagle when you fly with a bunch of turkeys.”

Although rising to the top amongst people who aren’t as focused on success as you is actually quite easy, it is nonetheless still difficult if everyone around you demonstrates varying degrees of the opposite of what you want.

• How many of your family members are happily married and have been for 20 years or more?
• How many of your closest friends are so in love that they actually glow with happiness?
• How many people do you know who are so confident in their relationships that they are able to focus on growing other areas of their lives because they have the relationship thing covered?

Financial Success

It has been said many times that a person’s income tends to be very close to the average of that person’s 10 closest friends. Take a look around your own life and see if it holds true.

Add up the approximate salary of the 10 people that you spend most of your time with – even if they’re not friends of yours – and then divide that number by 10. Is the figure that you came up with roughly what you make in a year?

Sure, there are exceptions to every rule, but for the most part, we allow the people and the financial circumstances that surround us to subconsciously create our own financial picture. 

• How many millionaires do you see hanging around those “Work today, Paid today” places at 6:00 o’clock in the morning, just chatting with their buddies?
• How many people with a 6-figure income do you see sitting around the local fast-food joint, waiting for their friend to get a 15-minute break from running the drive-through?
• How many times do you see a Ferrari or a brand-new BMW parked at the local convenience store while the owner is inside hanging around with his buddy at the cash register?

Obviously these scenarios don’t make any sense because people who have a lot of money simply don’t hang around with people who are in a radically different financial mindset. Or, for you “money isn’t everything” people, you could also say that people who don’t have money spend very little time hanging around with people who do.

Either way, the result is the same. It’s not the money itself that separates those people, it’s the mindset. James Arthur Ray does an incredible job of explaining these concepts in his Million Dollar Mindset series.

What do you do now?

Figure out what areas of your life you want to have more success in, and start doing everything in your power to spend time with people who have had success in those areas.

By “spend time” I don’t mean that you need to go play golf with them, either.

• If your goal is weight loss, then start spending a lot of time at the gym or in other environments that are supportive for people who want to be healthy. You don’t even have to know any particular person – just start spending time in supportive environments, and not spending time in situations that are dis-empowering.
• If your goal is relationship success, find some people who have been successful, and ask for their secrets. Read books about it, check out online resources, or just do some research out there in the real world.
• If your goal is financial success, get involved in some sort of a wealth building program. Learn from people who have been successful and find out how they did it. Here’s a hint: providing value!

Regardless of what your goal is, realize the fact that if you want success in that endeavor, it is absolutely imperative that you surround yourself with a winning team who will help carry you to success, rather than continue to spend time in environments where you are spoon fed belittling, dis-empowering, or negative circumstances.

This post was inspired by the PresidentWise^TM weekly teleconference held by Robert G. Allen. If you are interested in learning more about how to be successful – what Robert calls a “thoroughbred” – contact me for more information, or click on over to check out the BookWise Success Program.