The Power of Association: Who’s Influencing You?

Let’s talk about the power of association, because who we spend time with regularly, matters.

It affects our physical health, our mindset, world view, income level, relationships, and more.

It’s been said that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time around. The saying is true, birds of a feather do flock together.

It will be much more challenging to get where you desire to go in life if your peers have opposing goals.

For example, if you desire to be healthy and your peers do not, guess which types of activities they will choose…active or passive? You guessed it, passive!

And which type of restaurants will the group choose? The unhealthy ones, of course.

And when everyone orders burgers, fries, sodas or beer, and you order a chicken salad and water, oftentimes there are laughs and jokes made, and even if there are not, it can subconsciously wear down our resolve and affect our choices.

On the other hand, if we have friends that are long term thinkers, value their health, and are into fitness, as an example, they will often desire to be active, rather than doing sedentary things. In turn, this encourages us to be more active also.

The same applies to our closest friend’s mindsets and perspectives on life, their income level, saving and investing habits (or the lack thereof), their spiritual health, maturity and desires, and so on.

This is why it’s imperative that we choose our friends wisely, and why God’s word reinforces this over and over again.

Here’s just one example…

“Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” Proverbs 13:20

I love being around others, when possible, who are fitter than me, wiser, more spiritually mature, wealthier, better parents, humbler, have stronger marriages than me (if that’s even possible), who are more successful than me in any area of life, and so on.

Why? Because it positively affects me by helping me to stretch and grow to become more, accomplish more, and impact more people in the process.

The powerful influence our peers have on us can work either negatively against us, or work positively for us, depending on the peers we choose to surround ourselves with.

I’ll close with a great example I read this week about the power that others have on us.

In the 1950s, a psychologist by the name of Solomon Asch, performed a series of experiments on college students.

In the study, Asch would take college students, one at a time into a room, and show them two different cards, side by side.

The first card had a straight line on it. The second card contained three straight lines, all varying length, with one of the three lines obviously matching the length of the single line on the first card.

When asked which of the three lines on the second card (line A, B or C) matched the length of the line on the first card, the student would always get it correct…it was obviously line C.

When one other student (an actor planted by the psychologist conducting the experiment) was added to the room and chose one of the obviously incorrect answers on the second card, it had little effect on the subject's answer.

However, as the test was performed with 2, 3, all the way up to 8 other actors who all chose the same visibly wrong answer, the bewildered test subjects would fairly consistently became confused, laugh nervously, double-check the other participant’s reactions, begin to doubt their own eyes, and for 75% of the various test subjects that the professor put through this same process, they would eventually deliver the answer everyone else in the group was giving, even though it was obviously incorrect. (Atomic Habits, pp 118-121.)

This shows just one example of the powerful influence our tribe can have on our thought and decision-making processes.

Let me ask you today, who is influencing you the most?

Is it a positive influence, encouraging you towards bettering the things that matter most to you…your faith, your marriage, your parenting, your health & fitness, your finances, your service and impact to others, etc.?

What are you reading, watching, and listening to?

Who are you hanging around?

It matters. Choose your tribe wisely.

Thank you for being a part of my tribe!

Until next time ...