Choose the people you associate with carefully as
they are great contributors to your success. If you associate with or surround yourself with the wrong people, they will
negatively impact your life and business, as they slowly, almost unnoticed,
nudge you just a little off course every day. Until you wake one day, far down
the wrong road wondering how you landed up so far off course and how things
managed to go so wrong.
Action Idea: Take a really hard look
at your environment and evaluate everyone, who you spend time around that has or
may have some form of influence over you. Explore how all these associations are
affecting you what have they got you doing, listening to, reading, thinking and
most importantly how do these associations make me feel? Be brutally honest
with yourself, as you make up your list of associations, careful detail the
type of influence they have over you.
Are your Associations Positive or Negative
There are two main criterion,
to use when evaluating all your associations or relationships. Firstly are the associations
or relationships positive, do they make you feel good and contribute to your
success. It is obviously very beneficial to promote these relationships and
associations and you should work to spend more time around these people, as
they will have a positive influence on you. Secondly, look at any negative
relationships or associations, are they negative, draining and do they sap your
passion and drive. You clearly want to limit these associations as far as
possible and even eliminate these people from your life completely.
We Mirror the Behaviour of the People Around us
We have mirror Neurons in
our Brains that mirror the behaviour of the people around us, so whether you believe
it or not, both groups of people exert influence over you. The best example of this
is shown when one person in a room yawns and within minutes everyone in the
room has had an unconscious urge to yawn and has yawned themselves.
One group will contribute
to your growth and take you where you want to go. Whilst the other group will
creep into your life, like a thief in the night and slowly over time rob you of
your energy, passion, drive, discipline, potential and success. It is a
no-brainer for me and should be obvious to you that one of these two
associations will help you to go in the direction you want to go and the other
one will gradually creep in and rob your potential. So stop wasting your time
on people that are like vampires that drain your life blood and energy and
begin to invest your most valuable asset, your time, with only people that
matter.
Post Audit Clean-up
After you have carried
out your personal people audit and decided, which associations and
relationships are positive and contribute to your success and which don’t. You
only have three choices available, so that you can gain the maximum benefit
from all your positive associations and reduce the effect your negative
associations have on your life.
Disassociate –
Completely eliminate those draining and dream killing people from your life.
This is obviously not a decision you should take lightly, but I believe it is a
really crucial and often very difficult decision to make. This very tough
decision will eliminate a huge drain on your potential and help you realize the
quality of life you desire.
Limited
Association – If you are unable to completely dissociate from
certain people and eliminate your associations with them completely. Due to
family ties or work associations, etc. then it is imperative that you limit the
amount of contact you have with these people. We have so little time at our
disposal; invest your most valuable asset very wisely. Invest major time into
associations that will assist you and minor time into relationships that could
hurt you.
Expand Your
Associations – As this is the area where you are going to
leverage the most benefit, it is obviously the place where you should focus
your energy. Identify people that you believe you can have a mutually
beneficially relationship with and who you feel you can add value to and who in
return will add real and lasting value to you and your business. These are
called associations, which you develop on purpose and should be a conscious
part of your success strategy.
When you invest time
around these people you expand your circle of influence and by default you
reduce the amount of time you waste with the wrong people. This is not an easy
exercise to carry out, but it is most certainly a very worthwhile one. If you
are trapped in a cycle of unacceptable results and you seem to have reached a ceiling
on your success journey, carrying out this audit and consciously choosing your
associations going forward, may very well be the catalysts you are searching
for, to take you to the next level.
Author: Andrew Horton Greatest Motivational Speakers South Africa
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