They say we are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with—that’s why it’s so important to be more discerning regarding who we let in our circles.  The people and things we keep closest to us and that we interact with the most often tend to rub off on us.  We tend to stick with what we know, with the familiar and the more we wire our neurons to fire the same way repeatedly, the more engrained those thoughts become.  Our entire environment impacts our thoughts and behaviors, and that environment is everything we expose ourselves to, everything we consume, everything we partake in, and the people around us.   Typically those people fall into one of three categories: those who encourage us, distract us or discourage us.  Some of these behaviors may not be overt (although other times they may be).  But if people aren’t supporting or encouraging us, then we need to dive a little deeper and see if they are merely a distraction in our lives or are they a drain on us.  We are creatures of habit and comfort so this isn’t something we ask ourselves often. 

It can be a difficult process to evaluate the relationships around you but it’s necessary—including our relationship to ourselves.  We’ve spoken about keeping our word to ourselves and how that’s key in building trust in our ability to follow through on things.  The people around us will be an influence on that behavior.  As we start to look around us, we start to ask ourselves if our environment (again including all of those things that make up our environment) either help or hinder us.  More specifically, we have to ask if those things around us are helping us or hindering us from reaching our specific goal.  If we say we want something, have we fostered a mindset, a group of people, and the means for that goal to take off?  Or are we in an environment including people who continually don’t follow through or who speak negatively about our own pursuits, or people who distract us from working on our own things?

Once we do this type of analysis on our lives, it’s far easier to see where any inconsistencies may lay in our environment and where we have the opportunity to better align the environment with our goals.  There is a pattern in life about evaluating what we are doing for those who actively want to make something better, or those who constantly have these thoughts running through their minds.  But I will say, creating awareness around who we are and what we do—and if we are honest with ourselves—is an eye opening experience that is often the quickest way to course correct/yield results.  Too often we play the victim, acting as if our circumstances merely happened to us (not to say that CAN’T happen) but more often than not we are responsible for the results we see in our lives—and our thoughts, habits, and patterns determine what we get in life—more specifically how we align/change our thoughts, habits, and patterns.  Choose the environment well and make conscious choices about what we allow in our lives.