The Five People Around Your Table

I learned something years ago that I wish someone had told me when I was 25 and struggling. Would have saved me a lot of heartache. Would have saved me a lot of wondering why I couldn't seem to get ahead.

Here it is. You become the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

Now when I first heard that, I thought, that can't be right. I'm my own person. I make my own decisions. But then I started looking around. I started paying attention. And my friend, what I saw changed everything.

The Dinner Table Test

Somebody says, Jim, how do I know if I'm around the right people?

And I say, here's a test. Look at the five people you spend the most time with. Write down their names. Now ask yourself — what's their income? What are their habits? What do they talk about when you get together?

Here's what I found out. If you spend time with five broke people, you'll be the sixth. If you spend time with five complainers, you'll be the sixth. We call that the law of association. It's not mystical. It's mathematical.

A man I knew — successful businessman, sharp as they come — he said something I never forgot. He said, Jim, I can tell you a person's future by looking at their calendar and their phone contacts. Who do they spend time with? That tells me everything.

And he was right.

What Association Actually Does

Now here's what most people miss. They think association is about big conversations. About someone sitting you down and teaching you something profound.

No, no. That's not how it works.

Association works in the small moments. The offhand comments. The assumptions people make when they talk. The things that go unsaid because everyone at the table already agrees.

If you're around people who think $50,000 a year is good money, you'll start to believe $50,000 is the ceiling. Not because anyone told you that. But because that's the air you're breathing.

If you're around people who read books, you'll read books. If you're around people who watch six hours of television every night — well. You'll get very good at discussing television programs.

Somebody says, Jim, my friends aren't holding me back. They're supportive.

And I say, supportive of what? Supportive of your excuses? Supportive of you staying exactly where you are? There's a difference between friends who make you feel comfortable and friends who make you feel challenged.

Right?

The Hard Conversation

Now here's where it gets tricky. Here's where people get nervous.

What do you do when you realize your current associations aren't serving you?

I'm not saying abandon your friends. I'm not saying be cruel. But I am saying this — you've got to be strategic about your time. Time is the great equalizer. The successful person and the unsuccessful person both get 24 hours. The difference is how they invest those hours. And who they invest them with.

Here's what I learned to do. I didn't burn bridges. I built new ones.

I started attending seminars where successful people gathered. I started reading books by people I wanted to learn from. I couldn't have dinner with Aristotle, but I could read his philosophy. I couldn't sit in a meeting with a Fortune 500 CEO, but I could listen to recordings of his speeches.

We call that association by proxy. And it works.

A young woman said to me once, she said, Jim, I can't afford to go to expensive events. I don't know any successful people.

I said, can you afford a library card?

She said yes.

I said, then you can afford to spend time with anyone who ever wrote a book. That's your first association upgrade. Free of charge.

The Upgrade Strategy

Here's a good phrase for you. You don't have to subtract people. You can add better ones.

See, most people think they have to cut off old friends to make room for new influences. That creates drama. That creates guilt. And honestly, that's not even necessary.

What you do is this — you limit the time, not the relationship. Your old friends can still be your friends. But maybe you spend an hour with them instead of five hours. And those other four hours? You invest them differently.

You join a mastermind group. You find a mentor. You attend conferences where people are playing at a higher level. You read biographies of people who built something extraordinary.

Pretty soon, the average starts to shift. Not because you rejected anyone. But because you expanded your circle.

I've seen this work a hundred times. A man starts spending Saturday mornings at a business breakfast instead of watching football. Six months later, his income has doubled. Nobody told him to double his income. He just started thinking differently. He started seeing what was possible. He started believing that what others had achieved, he could achieve too.

That's what good association does. It expands your belief about what's possible.

The Real Question

Here's what it comes down to, my friend.

Are you willing to be uncomfortable in order to grow? Because upgrading your associations means walking into rooms where you don't know anyone. It means being the least successful person at the table — for a while. It means admitting that where you are isn't where you want to stay.

Most people won't do it. Most people would rather be the big fish in a small pond than the small fish in a bigger pond.

But here's what I know. You can't grow in a pond you've outgrown.

So here's my challenge to you. This week, identify one new association. One person, one group, one book, one seminar. Something that pulls you toward who you want to become instead of anchoring you to who you've been.

You don't have to change your whole life overnight. You just have to change your next Saturday morning. Then the one after that. Then the one after that.

The law of association is working whether you pay attention to it or not. Might as well make it work in your favor.