Community gives us meaning and helps us understand the things that happen to, and around, us in an increasingly disconnected world. We feel more alive when we feel seen and heard because it is a uniquely human need to belong to something larger than ourselves.
Community, the fifth and final principle of the Pilanesberg Project, is personified by the cape buffalo. The cape buffalo find power in their numbers and actually touch one another for security when they are lying down. A calf in distress will bellow mournfully, bringing herd members running at a gallop to defend it.
Just like what you do matters (see Principle #1: Action), the people around you matter. Everyone in your inner circle should be someone who you want to become more like in some way.
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
Jim Rohn, author and motivational speaker
This doesn’t mean that your friends have to outperform you in every way. If that were the case, what business would they have associating with you if they followed the above advice that probably made them successful in the first place? It simply means that they have one or more traits that you would like to develop in yourself.
Surround yourself with people you admire. I can’t find a reliable attribution for this quote, but there is a saying that goes, “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” Substitute “smartest” with “strongest,” “most loyal,” “best father,” etc. and you get the idea.
Chances are you will feel a degree of conviction if you do the following, but ask yourself what trait or traits you possess that would make someone want to have you in their circle. Are you someone who others would want to be like in some way?
Do not take advice from just anyone. If someone isn’t at least as knowledgeable about, or who isn’t doing better or who hasn’t done better at the thing you want to improve, then they are not positioned to help you, and could actually cause harm with their advice. For example, I would take investing advice from my brother without hesitation because he understands the world of high finance better than anyone I know, but I wouldn’t ask him how to improve my bench press because a.) I am stronger than him, and b.) he is a runner, not a weightlifter.
Don’t let proximity or chance determine who’s in your inner circle. Be intentional in who you allow in, after all, these people will play a central role in determining your own attitudes, beliefs, and even results in life. These sources of wisdom are hard to come by. Find them, retain them, and learn from them.
Sadly, sometimes this means cutting out toxic family members or friends who you were close with in the past from your daily life in order to break the cycle of dysfunction.
If you spend most of your time with people who have a poverty consciousness and believe that only greedy people become rich, then you have little chance of ever making the money that you desire to do the things in life you want to do. It’s difficult to go around saying things like, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer” and also make money at the same time unless you’re a psychopath because you won’t want to become rich if you believe in your heart that rich people are evil.
As a teacher, I have seen the above principles at work with troubled kids who come from traumatic backgrounds. They struggle despite receiving extensive wrap-around services from the school system because inside and outside of school, they only associate with other students who make unwise decisions and lack healthy coping mechanisms. Likewise, I have known kids who statistically shouldn’t have beaten the odds, but did, because they spent most of their time with friends who had (and whose families had) high expectations for themselves and discovered positive outlets for stress.
An alarming amount of my students report being lonely as the number one thing they would change about their life. It is critical to structure healthy interaction with other people into your day, regardless of the . It’s a cruel irony that the same technology that permits us to be more connected than at any point in history is at the same time directly responsible for greater social isolation.
A recent survey released by Cigna, a major insurer, found the percent of people classified as lonely increased from 54% in 2018 to 61% in 2019. The research also revealed eight in 10 people belonging to Generation Z (born between 1995 and 2015) and seven in 10 millennials (born between 1980 and 1994) reported being lonely as opposed to just half of Baby Boomers (born between 1944 and 1964) that Cigna surveyed.
These figures are likely to increase as more high school and college students take online classes and then join a workforce that is increasingly allowing remote work arrangements.
No one can do it for you…but, you can’t do it all yourself. The most successful people have surrounded themselves with people who helped them.