You Become What You Surround Yourself With

There’s little that impacts us more than the people we spend time with.

In Atomic Habits, James Clear writes that one of the easiest ways to build a habit is to join a community where the desired behavior is the normal behavior. For example, if you want to get in shape, join CrossFit. You might be wildly out of shape, but everyone there gets after it most days of the week. If you want to fit in, you’ll adopt this behavior. Getting in shape will be a byproduct of your new community’s normal behavior.

I think the flip side of this is how many negative behaviors or habits do we have that come from our current environment or the people we’re spending time with?

1,900 years ago, the stoic philosopher and teacher Epictetus warned his students:

“Above all, keep a close watch on this - that you are never so tied to your former acquaintances and friends that you are pulled down to their level. If you don’t, you’ll be ruined…you must choose whether to be loved these friends and remain the same person, or try to become a better person at the cost of these friends…if you try to have it both ways you will neither make progress nor keep what you have.”

One of the most difficult things to do can be to break away from a group that we know is bringing us down. It doesn’t have to say anything about those individuals as people. But if we have behaviors we want to change and that behavior is a norm for the community we’re currently a part of, we have to leave.

Goethe once said, “Tell me with whom you consort and I will tell you who you are...if I know how you spend your time, then I know what might become of you.” We become what we surround ourselves with.

Spend time around unhappy people, you’ll become unhappy. Spend time around lazy people, you’ll become lazy.

Nipsey Hustle has a great quote, “If you look at the people in your circle and you don’t get inspired. Then you don’t have a circle. You have a cage.”

Don’t be afraid to curate the people in your life. Don’t build a cage for yourself. Be ruthlessly decisive with who you spend time with. It’s not possible to be surrounded by people you don’t want to be like and not become like them.  

Choose people who are easy to be around. Spend time around people you want to be like. Marcus Aurelius said, “Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we’re practically showered with them.”

We can do it through people we know or through books, seek out people better than you. Seek out people who embody the traits you want to see in yourself. Upgrade your life by upgrading who you let in it.