Transcriber: Barbara Solana Reviewer: Hani Eldalees
Are we a product of our environment?
like the great motivational speaker Jim Roan once said:
You are the average of the five people that you hang out with the most.
Think about that. You are the average of the five people that you hang out with
the most. Now, I'm not suggesting everyone goes change in their friends
and family upon hearing this,
but are you being mindful of who you're spending your time with
and who you're taking your advice from?
We all eventually become a product of our environment.
We all have different accents. And across the globe, we speak several languages.
Why? Because we grew up in different environments.
I grew up in a small country village with a strong country accent.
And then I moved to Dublin and I spent several years living there.
And over time, my accent mellowed and changed.
And I wasn’t very different to the rest of my family
and all because I changed my environment.
Something very interesting that I once read.
If you put a frog in boiling water, what will it do? It'll actually jump out.
But if you put a frog in cold water and you gradually turn the temperature up
it will die. Why will it die?
Because it didn't realize that the temperature was rising.
So what does frogs got to do with their environment?
The reason the frog died is because it didn't realize that
the temperature was getting turned up.
And this is indicative of people in their surroundings.
So often in life, we surround ourselves with people
and things that are killing our motivation and our ambition.
And we don't even realize it.
So step away from the things that are distracting you from your goals
and where you want to be in life. If you want to be successful in life,
you need to put yourself around other successful people.
Success breeds success.
If you want to be healthy,
get yourself around people who are living a healthy life.
One of the craziest things I've ever heard is people taking their advice
on their career from people who don't have a career or don't have a job.
Why would you do that? I'm not going to take health advice from somebody who's
clearly not healthy, not because they're a bad person,
but simply because they're not in a position to give advice on it.
And a really good way of getting this is by asking yourself,
would I trade places with you?
This is a really honest way of evaluating the advice that you're receiving.
So look at the person who's giving you advice.
So whether that personal advice, business advice,
financial, relationship or otherwise?
And ask yourself honestly, do you want to be where they are?
If the answer is yes, then by all means take that advice and act upon it.
But if the answer is no, then you cannot act upon it.
We cannot allow ourselves to be conditioned by society.
Society tries to condition us to think negatively.
You walk into a newsagents or if you turn on the news,
most of the time it's negative headlines. Why? Because negativity sells.
When you were young, you thought everything was possible.
Ask a kid what they want to be when they grow up
and they will tell you
they want to be astronauts, they want to be famous,
they want to be all sorts of fabulous things.
But as they go through life,
people start telling them that it's not possible and they can't achieve it.
And over time, they start to believe it. The fear comes from the outside.
It comes from society. It comes from friends. It comes from school.
It comes from family. And we believe this fear because we trust these people.
So society actually teaches us to play it safe.
There’s a theory out there called the crab theory,
and it’s based on the metaphor of what happens when you put several crabs in
a bucket together. The crabs will crawl all over each other,
trying to get out of the bucket.
But in the process, none of them will actually escape.
Because simply they keep putting each other back down.
On the contrary, if you put one crab in a bucket on its own,
it will get out because there's no other crabs to put it back down.
This theory is a metaphor for the human response to self-improvement and others.
So often when we see others advancing,
we consciously or subconsciously reach out to hold them back.
It’s like the friend trying to get you to eat the cake
when they know that you are on the diet.
So we can’t let other people dictate how we’re going to live our lives.
If everyone else puts their hand the fire,
does that mean that you should do the same thing?
Well, I hope not, because otherwise you're going to get burnt.
So just remember, we all have the same potential.
And the only thing that is stopping us is our mindset
and our mindset comes down to our awareness
and our awareness of our environment.
Is what ultimately is going to help us to change it.
Nothing changes if nothing changes. I'll say that one more time.
Nothing changes if nothing changes.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over
and expecting to get a different result.
If you keep surround yourself with the same people
and you keep submerging yourself in the same environment
and it's not one that you aspire to, then your results are never going to change.
So if you want to take charge of your world.
Then you need to change how you act and how you think.
And that starts with you changing your environment.
Just remember, you're in control,
and that's the most liberating part of all of this.
And the only thing that’s going to stop you is what surround you.