Surround Yourself with the Right People for Success

What if your best friends were Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg & Oprah Winfrey? Do you think your life would be different?

What if your best friends were Lindsey Lohan, Miley Cyrus, Kanye West, Lamar Odom & Charlie Sheen? Do you think your life would be different then?

Motivational speaker Jim Rohn famously said that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Think about who those people are for you. They have a huge impact on your life.

They may be your friends, family, co-workers, people you’re on a committee with, parents of your children’s friends, people in a class you’re taking,

All of these people can affect what you eat, where you go to eat, what you wear, if you workout, how you workout, what you do in your free time, your spending habits, what books you read, what activities you have your kids do, your mindset, how successful you are.

If you think about it for a few minutes, I bet you’ll come up with a dozen examples to support this. I think about being in college, living in a suite with 7 other girls. We wound up spending our free time together, eating the same things, wearing the same clothes, watching the same tv shows, joining the same clubs.

Quite frequently, I see how people’s health is affected by their family and friends. I have a client who needs to lose well over 100 pounds. His wife also needs to lose weight, but isn’t taking any action to do so & seems to be sabotaging his weight loss efforts. He’s scheduled to workout with me after work. His wife often makes plans for them to go out to dinner when we are scheduled to workout. Also, he goes upstairs after dinner to avoid being by the kitchen and tempted to eat more. His wife bakes cookies & brings them up to him after he has gone upstairs.

I have another client whom I see in the morning. Recently, she and her friend planned to go into the city for the day. Her plan was to workout and then go into the city. When she arrived for her session, she said her friend was giving her a hard time and was trying to get her to cancel her training session even though she had time to workout before they left. She said it’s hard for her because her friends don’t exercise & they are always trying to get her to blow off working out.

I think about my group of friends. They all exercise. When we’re making plans, working out is often mentioned. If we’re doing something on a Saturday, someone might say, “I’m running a race in the morning” or “I’m taking 9:30 spin class, so by the time I get home, shower & change, I can meet at noon”. Or, when making plans after work, “I want to go for a quick run when I get home, so let’s meet at 8”. We expect exercise to be a part of each other’s schedules. We support it.

We can also be affected by other people’s eating & drinking habits. Again, college life comes to mind. I have memories of people being cheered on to do shots and eating junk food late night.

And, for some reason, people like to push desserts on others. Have you ever tried to say “no thanks” to a piece of birthday cake? People are adamant that you have a piece of their birthday cake. “It’s my birthday! You have to have a piece of cake!”

People you hang out with can affect your mood. When I was working in marketing, I dealt with vendors. There were 2 guys we mainly used for the same thing. One of them was a total downer. Whenever we spoke & I asked “how are you?”, he would sigh & complain about something. The other guy was the exact opposite. When I asked him how he was, he always said, “I’m great!” with much enthusiasm. I knew he wasn’t always great, but he always said he was. And, it always struck me how much nicer it was to talk to him than the other guy.

Think about the 5 people you spend the most time with. Do they have healthy habits? Do they enrich your life? Are they happy? Are they successful? Do you respect them?  

Think about your ideal self—the person you try to be daily, and the one you are working towards becoming. Do the people you surround yourself with support your efforts?  Do they encourage you to take action to become better?

If you answered "yes" to all, great! You’re hanging with the right people!

If you answered "no" to any of the questions, you need to find people who will help you be the best you. There are plenty of them out there! They may not live next door, but there are groups for just about anything these days. And, with social media, it's easy to find like-minded people.

I work alone but want to connect with other people who share my enthusiasm for helping people lead healthy lives, so I attend conferences and join groups on social media with people who share my interests. People post information, questions, struggles, and total strangers responded with answers and support – it’s great! 

There are supportive people out there for you to connect with, it doesn’t matter where you live! You just need to find those people! 

Remember: you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. It’s worth your time and effort to make sure you surround yourself with the right people—people who will help you be your best.

What's Important

Tuesday was my 14th wedding anniversary. As I do every year, I looked through photos of what was probably the best day of my life, with mixed emotions.

I see photos of people I'm no longer in contact with, people who have gotten divorced, and people who have died. But, those faces, on that day—along with those of my friends, family, husband and mine—were filled with love, laughter and happiness.

Our wedding took place just 4 days after September 11, 2001. Every one of our guests was affected by the tragedy, but they managed to open their hearts to celebrate our union and life that day. I felt blessed to be alive, in love, and surrounded by people I cared about.

Tragedy usually puts things in perspective. It makes us think about what's really important, what's really NOT important, and what we take (or took) for granted.

After a tragedy or bad diagnosis, we tell our family that we love them, hug them a little longer, and appreciate what we have. We are kind and patient when we otherwise wouldn't be. We have no interest in drama or the people that create it. Superficial things lose meaning. We are mainly concerned with health, well being and basic necessities.

Then, time passes.

Things start to annoy us again. The show we set to record got cut off; our internet is slow; we didn't make it through the light because the driver in front of us wasn't paying attention; the woman in front of us at the grocery store is taking time to look through her bag for exact change; the train was delayed—again.

There are a thousand things every day that we COULD focus on, get distracted by or annoyed about. But, if we are CLEAR about what we want and how we want to interact with others, then we can focus on what's important.

That clarity not only gives us a sense of purpose and identity, but helps guide the decisions we make each day. As choices are presented to us, we can ask ourselves questions like "Will this lead me closer to my goal?", "Is this how I want to express myself?" or simply, "Is this important to me?"

Take some time to think about what's REALLY important to you, the future you want, and how you want to present yourself. It may take time, discipline and work to figure it out and keep it in mind but, with rewards such as satisfaction and joy, I'm pretty sure you'll find it worth it :)

Living a High Performance Life: INFLUENCE

The fifth area of high performance is influence.

No man is an island, as the saying goes. You may have brilliant ideas, but if you don't get support from others, they probably won't ever come to fruition. You need to have influence over your family, friends, co-workers, and possibly strangers to accomplish your goals.

We use influence for little things in our daily lives—to get friends to try a new restaurant; to get your family to go to a movie you want to see.

Think about the person who has had the most influence over you. Why was that person able to influence you? Keep those qualities in mind as you think about an area you'd like to have more influence.

Living a High Performance Life: PRODUCTIVITY

The fourth area of high performance is productivity. Being highly productive is being consistently focused and effective, which means being good at minimizing distractions and maintaining priorities.

There are so many distractions in our lives today and we've been taught that multi-tasking is a good thing. Well, studies have shown that multi-tasking is NOT a good thing. It makes you LESS productive at each of the things that you are trying to do. You can effectively get more done by FOCUSING on 1 thing at a time.

Think about a time when you were being really productive. What were you doing?

I think back to when I was making a career change to become a personal trainer. I had very little time outside my corporate job, but I made very good use of it. I was focused & excited about becoming a trainer; I made becoming a trainer a priority, and I worked really hard at it.

Think about where you are not being productive enough right now. What's the difference between your time of high productivity and now?

What can you do to get back to high productivity?

You may need to re-adjust your priorities; block off time on your schedule; or take steps to eliminate or remove yourself from distractions. This may be a challenge, but in the end, you'll wind up less stressed, getting more done, and feeling better about the way you spend each day :)

Living a High Performance Life: COURAGE

The third area of high performance is courage. This is referring to the courage to: come out of your comfort zone, be decisive with difficult decisions, take bold action, fully express yourself, and take risks.

Everyone has places in their lives they could have more courage.

People avoid taking action for three reasons and they're all fear based:

1. They're worried they may lose something. For example, they want to lose weight, but don't want to stop going out to eat or to Happy Hours with friends.
2. They're worried that something may be too hard. For example, they want to lose weight, but are afraid they won't be able to stick to a diet.
3. They're worried they'll go through the process of doing something and won't get their desired outcome. For example, they're afraid they will deprive themselves of foods they like and torture themselves at the gym, but not lose any weight.

Ask yourself if there are areas in your life that you are backing down from something or someone. 

What's the worst thing that could happen if you take the action you've been suppressing? Is the answer really that bad?

What's the best thing that could happen? Focus on THAT and take action! 

Being courageous will lead you to greater success, experience and happiness in the end. So, get out of your comfort zone and start enjoying the rewards of being courageous :)

Living a High Performance Life: ENERGY

The second area of high performance is energy. It seems like hear so many people complaining about being exhausted, stressed, overwhelmed. This is awful! If we don't have enough energy, we can't be our best for our family, friends, career and ourselves. We want to sustain high levels of energy so we an be motivated to achieve our goals and be happy.

How's your energy level? If it's not good, what's sucking the energy out of you? It could be poor nutrition, lack of proper sleep, or stress.

If you are eating processed, sugary or fried foods, you must have feelings of being bloated, lethargic and just plain crappy. Sick to whole foods—they give us the nutrients we need for vitality.

If you aren't getting enough quality sleep, you're paying for it—whether you believe it or not. We need 7-8 hours. I hear many people say they're "fine with only 5 hours of sleep". Despite those claims, they're not. Studies have shown that lack of proper sleep causes negative effects—both physically and mentally. Even people that are confident they "are fine" with fewer hours have performed worse on cognitive tests than when they had the full 8 hours.

If you need to be up by 6:00 am, figure out how to be in bed at 10:00 pm. And, make sure your bedroom is is conducive to getting a good night's sleep. Your room should be dark and cool. Your bed should be comfortable. Make sure you've turned off your phone and laptop/ipad off so that you don't hear dinging through the night.

Are you stressed? Why? What can you do to alleviate your stress? Some stress-reducing activities are: meditation, deep breathing techniques, exercise, getting a massage, playing with a pet, discussing  your stress with therapist, friend or loved-one. It's vitally important to address your stress. Studies have shown that stress not only takes a toll on us emotionally, but physically as well.

Energy is a key component to living a High Performance Life. Take some time to think about what adjustment you can make to give yourself more energy so you can feel better, be your best and live a High Performance Life :)

The Saboteurs

 

These are my exercises saboteurs. They're VERY cute, but nonetheless, they're manipulative saboteurs :)  When I exercise in the house, they appear right where I'm about to exercise—in all their cuteness, usually with a toy—wanting me to play with them, rather than do my workout. It takes some willpower to stick to my routine.

Saboteurs come in lots of forms and you might not even have thought about the ones in your life. Sometimes the people closest to us sabotage our efforts to make changes, even if those changes are in our best interest.

I hear about this a lot from my fitness clients. One client who is trying to lose an enormous amount of weight tells me stories of his wife bringing him cookies when he's already gone up to bed and making dinner plans that conflict with his scheduled training sessions. Another client's friend tried to convince her to cancel her training session and go shopping. The stories go on and on.

It's tough to create a new habit when you don't have a support network; and, it's REALLY frustrating to have your family and friends make it even harder.

If the people who are sabotaging your efforts are close to you, you need to have a serious conversation with them. Explain that what you're trying to do is really important to you. It would be great if they want to join you in your efforts, but if they don't want to, they still need to respect what you're doing. Support would be wonderful, but at the very least, they shouldn't be trying to sway you.

If you don't see those people often or you aren't close to them, you probably just need to avoid them—at least for now, while the habit is something you're still struggling with.

Lastly, find people who are also committed to the same thing(s) you are and connect with them—either in person or online. Support & accountability are keys to success. Making change is hard. You don't need to (& shouldn't) do it alone!

Feel free to share your struggles. And, I'd love to hear your stories of success :)