THE FIVE MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE!

You’ve probably heard the claim that we are the sum total of the 5 people we spend the most time with in life. In fact, I think I’ve said that very thing in one or more of the podcasts. The saying is often attributed to the great Jim Rohn, whom I had the great pleasure of learning from back in the late 90’s. Of course, a saying like that is catchy and poignant so it gets repeated often because it makes a lot of sense. The people you spend the most time with have some direct and indirect influence over who and what you become. Its so often why some people will attribute their successes in life to leaving a small town or a bad relationship or a group of friends that didn’t have much going on in life. The Stanford University management professor and Author, Robert Sutton, reminded us in his book, ‘The No Asshole Rule’, to be careful of where you choose to work because you will become like the people you work with, they wont become like you. Sounds odd but he’s referencing the power of the many versus the few. If you’d like to listen to the podcast version of this blog, just click here to be taken to the best podcast for appraisers!

The five people you work with on a daily basis have more collective power to change you than you have to change all of them. And the number 5, by the way, is just a fun number so if you only work with 2 people, the concept still applies. It might be 7, it doesn’t matter. The idea is that we become what we think about all day long and those thoughts are heavily influenced by our surroundings, and that includes the other humans around us that are planting seeds into our minds daily.

Let’s take this 5 person rule a little further because there are a couple standard responses from people. One of them is, ‘ya know, I’m a pretty strong individual and I don’t think I’m really all that influenced by the people around me’, the other, and this is from people who work primarily alone, or maybe with one other person around like appraisers and people with home offices, and its, ‘this doesn’t really apply to me because I’m not around 5 other people on any given day, unless I go to the grocery store!’ I’ll deal with the second one in a few minutes, but lets talk about those that don’t think the 5 people you interact with the most have any influence or effect on your thoughts, ideas, and actions. This, by the way, includes spouses, significant others, family members, etcetera. Quite often we will discount those closest to us because we grow used to their attitudes, their sarcasm, their jokes, their personalities, and the fact that we resign ourselves to having to live with or put up with them. Quite often, in fact, it might be our closest family members that are the most negative influences in our lives and the ones that need a reassessment of how much influence they actually have over us. I’ll take this a half step further and encourage you to ask yourself if you might even be that person. We tend not to look at ourselves in the mirror but a close hard look at our own attitudes and behaviors may reveal you to be the one that everyone else around you needs to be wary of. If you’ve found yourself cut off or cut out of anybody’s life, it may be time to examine whether or not you’re the toxic one.

Nevertheless, I’ll share with a study that was done around this 5 closest people idea and the interesting results that were gleaned from it. The first study was conducted by Nicholas Chistakis and James Fowler on the breadth of social influence in our lives and they examined the data from another study called the Framingham Heart Study, which is one of the largest and longest running health studies ever conducted. This study began in 1948 to improve our understanding of some of the causes of coronary heart disease in the US. 70 years later and the data now includes three generations of participants. The study covers an extremely wide variety of factors that may affect heart health and the testing includes echocardiography, exercise stress testing, heart and brain MRIs, vascular testing, DNA analysis, gene sequencing, deep metabolic studies, microbiome studies, and a bunch of other very detailed technical tests and areas of testing. So these two researchers dug deep into the Framingham Heart Study when they realized just how deep and detailed the study was because they saw that the data sets included way more than just studies around the heart. They found very detailed medical histories of all of the participants, demographic influences and factors, and detailed questions about family members and friends. So they started with something fairly straight forward and easy: obesity. What they found was that if a friend of yours becomes obese, you yourself are 45 percent more likely than chance to gain weight over the next 2 to 4 years. They didn’t say you too would become obese, but that your obese friend would, just by being part of your social circle, increase your chances of gaining weight by a whopping 45 percent. The more interesting part of the study, in my opinion, was that they found if a friend of your friend becomes obese, even if you don’t know that friend, your chances of gaining weight increase by 20 percent. And then they found that the effect extends out one more person, the friend of the friend, even if you don’t know them, you’re still 10 percent more likely to gain weight than random chance. In essence, your friends make you fat, and so do their friends and the friends of their friends.

Since they had data spanning over three generations they could really dig into these cause and effect relationships and, although they looked for a variety of other explanations, what they found was that the most likely explanations was simply what becomes an acceptable norm. If your friend is obese, or a friend of a friend is obese, it changes the perception through the whole chain of friends regarding what is considered to be an acceptable body size and our behavior changes accordingly. Don’t get mad at me, this is all part of this extensive study on the effects of social influence on health and wellness. They found the same data when they studied smoking rates. They found that if your friend smokes, you’re 61 percent more likely to be a smoker yourself, and if a friend of your friend smokes, you’re still 29 percent more likely to smoke. If a friend of the friend that you don’t even know smokes, you’re 11 percent more likely to smoke. This, to me, was extremely valuable information because we have known for a very long time without any scientific studies needed that human beings are a densely connected web of electricity and influence on each other. They’ve done studies whereby a person on one side of the ocean, hooked up to a bunch of testing equipment, was affected positively by the mere thoughts by a loved one on the other side of the ocean. Their heart signals changed, their brainwaves changed, and they exhibited signs of knowing the exact moment when the loved one sent them an intentional positive thought. Imagine the effect when you’re actually in close proximity to another human being! The study that the two researchers did on the Framingham Heart Study went further than just obesity and smoking though. Their research looked at happiness , how it’s affected by others, and how deep the social connections go. What they found was no surprise at all: happy friends make you happier. Of course, we already know where this one is going. Their happy friends make you happier as well. They found that if a friend of a friend that you don’t even know is an all around happy person, you are 6 percent more likely than mere chance to be happy. 6 percent doesn’t sound like much in the grand scheme of things but to put it in perspective, another study found that a $10,000 raise would only trigger a 2 percent increase in your happiness. A 6 percent increase in happiness simply by surrounding yourself with happier and more positive people, or a 2 percent increase in happiness with a $10,000 raise.

I know, I know… my corral of negative appraisers is right on my heels going, “give me the $10,000 man, that’s what’ll make me happy, I don’t need any more friends!” The point is not about the $10,000, it’s about what and who you surround yourself with on a regular basis.  In fact, if we want to talk about money for a minute, they’ve done studies on that too. Researchers from Purdue and the University of Virginia studied millions of people over 164 countries and found the exact dollar amount associated with happiness and the amount associated with emotional well being. They adjusted for standards of living and economic factors, of course, but they found that the ideal income for individuals to be satisfied is $95,000 per year, and $60,000 to $70,000 for emotional well being. That number is different for families with children, of course. The studies found that once that threshold was reached, further increases in income were actually associated with a decrease in happiness. The most likely reason for the decrease in happiness is that, above a certain level, you’re more likely to compare yourself to others and feel a need to keep earning without any correlation to your own inner desires and happiness, other than simply to compete or keep up.  An interesting part of that study was that they found that money actually does buy happiness, and its when you spend it on others. Now, I don’t know if I necessarily agree with these researchers findings in my own life or if you would either. Many of us make way more than that and are quite happy as a result. I don’t necessarily think that the research is suggesting that people making more than $95,000 should not try any harder either, simply that there was an inverse correlation between earning more than that and a commensurate increase in happiness. Meaning, if you made $100,000 last year and you make $120,000 this year, which is a 20% increase in your income, it is unlikely that there will be a commensurate 20% increase in your happiness.

The point and power of these studies, for me anyway, is not about money however. The power of the Framingham Heart Study and the ancillary studies done by Christakis and Fowler is in the correlative data regarding your social circle and what we intentionally and unintentionally let control our happiness, our health, our well being, our mindsets, and our attitudes. So, while that study found the Rule of Five, the one that says we’re the sum total of the five people we spend the most time with, to be much greater than just those five people, what it also found was that the percentages are different depending on whether or not the activity is positive or negative. For example, similar studies have found that negative words, even negative facial expressions, have an emotional effect that is 4 to 7 times greater than a positive word or facial expression, like a smile. 4 to 7 times greater than being positive! Of course, we know that a kind word, a smile, a nice action like opening the door or saying thank you, or better yet, I appreciate you, has a positive and viral effect, but many have no idea that their negativity is having an effect that is 4 to 7 times greater on those around you than your positive words and actions. That means that if you’re a positive person like me, you have to work 4 to 7 times harder to bring people back to neutral after they’ve been around a negative person. Of course, the most damning of the conclusions from the Framingham Heart secondary study was the correlation between negativity, cynicism, and those in our social networks and the rate of heart disease, stroke, and heart attack. Negativity and your social network can literally kill you folks! I’ve said it many times before on this show and I’ll continue to preach this message, especially in the appraisal and related industries where there tends to be a more than overt negativity bias and higher than average rate of cynicism, you must guard who you let influence and affect you with everything you have! Understand that when you look around your immediate influences, you may not feel like you have much choice in whether or not you can accept their behavior, their attitude, their words, and their influence on you because they’re your spouse, your significant other, maybe its a parent or child, but understand you do have a choice. You get to choose whether or not you will allow words, attitudes, cynicism, negativity, and toxicity into your life. Sometimes cutting out the cancer in your social circle will literally save you from getting the kind of cancer that kills you. And if you look around and find that everybody around you is actually compensating for your negativity and cynicism, it might be time to do a personality and attitude overhaul to save your own life and the lives of those you love.

Now, to briefly talk to those of you who may work from home, maybe you’re a one or two person shop, which is very common in the appraisal industry, don’t think that these issues don’t affect you, they do! They affect you in a variety of ways. For one, your social network in the 21st century includes all of your virtual social networks which, of course, includes Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, TikTok, and any others that you may be associated with. Many of us are members of different industry related private groups and some of us run our own private groups for different reasons. If you are part of any of these groups, you know that they have an effect on your emotional well being. I, personally, have learned a ton over the last 10 years from forums and social networks, both what to do and what not to do. I’ve also learned what it looks and sounds like to be a jerk and what it looks and sounds like to be an uplifter of people and a reasonable responder to what might seem like unreasonable people. We’ve likely all have had our moments on social media and maybe experiences where we regretted what we wrote or how it came across, I know I have. The point being that just because you work alone or don’t have 5 people around you affecting your well being, or so you think, you actually do. It’s the 50 people who are the most active on social media, it’s the so called news people on Fox, CNN, and MSNBC you have running in the background, its the political drivel droning on in the background, and it’s the constant doom and gloom rocketing into your ears and straight into your subconscious with no critical door stop. Whatever you are feeding your brain with daily is what affects you the most when it comes to your attitude, mindset, belief systems, and your overall health, diet notwithstanding. What I recommend for the one or two person shops is to make it a point to get out the office on a regular basis, minimum three times per week, and go work at a Panera or a coffee shop or a Barnes and Noble. When you get around other people who are more likely to be happy, positive, and upbeat, and your neurons are being directly affected in a positive way. Positivity is viral just as negativity is viral. For those who don’t work around other people, you may have told yourself that you’re more productive that way, you’re more positive that way, you don’t have to deal with other human beings, and whatever else you may tell yourself and some it may very well be true. In fact, it may be better for the rest of the world that you work alone. However, as human beings we all need connection and we need to be filled emotionally with the energy of other happy and positive people. Where there is a lack of that, there is simply stagnation, decay, and eventual death. I’m not necessarily talking about your physical death, but instead about the death of your attitude, mindset, and outlook.

The other extremely important aspect and unintended consequence of working alone is the lack of accountability for growth and expansion, as well as the lack of simply being around others who are doing more than you are. I’ve talked about it many times and, being what I call a business and success coach, I see it every single week and have for the past 2 decades. We become like those we let influence us and those who choose to be influenced by those doing more, accomplishing more, those with better attitudes, better outlook, and those who simply think much bigger than maybe you do is absolutely vital for growth and, in my opinion, happiness. Those of you who are in coaching programs know exactly what I’m talking about because you’ve placed yourself in positions to be held accountable by your fellow coaching teams, but many of you have also placed yourselves in a position to be around people doing more than yourself. You simply can’t not grow when you are in an environment like that. For those that are never around others, you’re never being pushed to be, do, and have more tomorrow than you do today. And I’m not just talking about money or business. I’m taking about perspectives on happiness, health, wellness, longevity, savings, investments, and whatever else one can be positively influenced by by being around others doing more. If you want to grow, be more, have more, do more, you have to put yourself in uncomfortable positions, positions of being held accountable, and simply around bigger thinkers than you. Change those 5 people most affecting you in your life just a bit and see what the net outcome is.

At the very least, get out of your office, basement, bedroom, or wherever you do your daily work, and get around other human beings in a place that is likely to be positive and somewhat uplifting. You don’t even have to talk with the other people. Put your ear buds in and work on your laptop. Every now and then simply look up and people watch. Catch the eye of somebody and smile. Hold the door for somebody, say hello and have a great day to somebody, and be sure to tell the young man or woman at the counter how much you appreciate them. You must take it upon yourself to control the flow of positivity and negativity coming into and out of your life on a daily basis. As much as I have learned personally from some of the social media groups, the education comes at a cost, yet to be seen or realized in some cases. What I do know is that I can feel my heart rate increase when I read some of the posts and responses from some of the people, I can feel the Adrenalin and cortisol being released into my bloodstream, and I can feel my overall attitude decline. It seems to be one of the strange phenomenons with social media, rarely does it lift us up and make us healthier people, it mostly makes us feel inadequate and want to lash out at others in ways we wouldn’t if we were face to face. I talked in the last podcast about the Gyges Effect and how people do and say things when there is no perceived consequence and no repercussions other than a useless online battle of words. The end result, however, is hidden and deadly. The result is what occurs within you and the deleterious effect it has on your overall health and well being. Be very careful my friends. Take an honest look around your social circle. As hard as it may be to consider, there may be people in your life or social circle that need to go. There may be family members that need to be removed and have limited access if they are negatively affecting your well being and attitude. And there are most certainly people within your direct and indirect circle that need an assessment of whether or not their behaviors and attitudes are having a normative effect on you. Meaning, have you become more accepting of things you probably shouldn’t accept simply because it appears to be the norm. Are the behaviors of others affecting you directly or indirectly and what do you need to do about it? It is literally life and death!

I’d like to thank you my friends for once again hanging out with me this week and I will apologize only slightly for ironically ending on what kinda seems like a negative note after talking about lifting others up and being around positive people. I say only slightly because its an important topic and one that needs to be examined in your life. My hope, of course, is that, at the very least, this show is a little bit of positivity, potentially uplifting in some way,  maybe a little motivating, eye opening, or inspirational. Whatever you may be needing at the time you are listening to it. Either way, please know that I appreciate you wherever you are in life and whatever journey you’re on and I hope to cross paths with you in person one day so that we can have a positive effect on each other. Until then my friends and until next week, I’m out…