Surrounding Yourself With The Right People

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you don't miss any more episodes. I put out episodes four times a week that deal with neurology, psychology, early childhood development, cognitive behavioral therapy so that you can start to understand yourself better. Because if you can understand yourself, you can grow yourself. And if you can grow yourself, you can make your life better. And that is what we talk about here. So if you want to learn more about it, hit that subscribe button. Today, I'm going to be talking about how to surround yourself with the right people and also what your friendships should look like.

0:41There are friendships where you just can, you know, be stagnant and it's the same as it was 10 years ago and neither one of you challenge each other. Or there could be friendships where both of you, by being in this relationship with each other, make each other better. Same way that you're in a romantic relationship and hopefully you and your partner make each other better. Well, when you're in a real relationship, friendship with somebody, you should also make each other better. But let's zoom out real quick. What is friendship in the first place? You know, yeah, sure. It's people who have the same hobbies as you, people who make you laugh, people that are fun to be around, people who show up for you no matter what, people who are very loyal to you.

1:25Those are definitely some good qualities. it's all of these things but there's one aspect that I think gets overlooked when it comes to friendships and I believe and maybe somebody else out there believes something different I think that your friends should challenge you to grow I think your friends should make you better and I think you should do the exact same thing for them your friends should challenge your mediocrity they should call you out on your bullshit they should get you out of your comfort zone when they see that you're getting a little bit too comfortable. And I don't mean in the way of they should humiliate you.

2:02I don't mean that your friends should belittle you and you shouldn't do the same for them, but they should help you grow and evolve into the type of person that you wanna be. And you, your job should also be to help them grow and to evolve into the better version of them as well. And your friends in reality can either be part of the reason why you're growing, They can challenge you. They can verbally and energetically challenge you, but also with their own actions. Or they could also at the same time be the reason why you're not growing. Because you've probably heard it said, but you're the average of the five people that you spend the most time with.

2:45You are. I saw a thing that said that if you're friends with five people who are obese, you have an 83 % higher chance of being obese at some point in time in your life. And it's not saying there's anything wrong with people who are obese. I'm not saying that at all. It just shows you that typically what we do is we happen to take the habits and be the same as the people that we spend the most time with. And so what I think is really important for everybody to understand is take a step back. Look at who you surround yourself with and say, what I want to trade places with these people? Are these people inspiring me?

3:22Are they helping me? Am I helping them? Am I inspiring them? You know, your friends should be part of the reason why you're growing, and you should be part of the reason why they're growing. And you should challenge them. You know, this isn't a competition. This isn't like, hey, I'm trying to beat you. You could compete at some things and all that, but it's in the sense of you challenging them. It's like, I love you too much for you to not live up to your potential. If you really truly love your friends, Shouldn't you want the best for them? Shouldn't you want the most in their life that they can get out of it?

3:55Like, hey, I'm not going to let you be less than I know you can be. And so some people like that and some people don't. And so if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably the type of person who would love to be challenged by some of your friends. You probably are. If you weren't into that, you probably wouldn't be listening to this podcast. And so surrounding yourself with people who are fine with mediocrity, who don't confront their fears, who don't challenge their own boundaries, who don't push themselves to be better, who don't read, who don't meditate, who don't journal, who don't try to grow themselves every single day, who don't have a routine of growing themselves mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, if they don't have that routine, it will influence you to follow a similar path of complacency.

4:41And I don't want to go into this podcast episode and make you think that I'm just trashing people who are not into that. But if you're the type of person who wants to grow, it becomes so much easier to grow when you surround yourself with people who are wanting to grow. It becomes so much easier to work out when you have friends that work out. If you go to a place, let's say you're like, you know what, I'm out of shape. I want to go to CrossFit. I'm just going to start hanging out at CrossFit. And you go to CrossFit and you work out a few times and you make a couple of friends who have been going to CrossFit for four or five years and you hang out around them and you spend a lot more time with them, you will naturally start to eat better.

5:18You'll start to think more healthy thoughts. You're going to start to be a little bit more healthier in your decisions. You're going to probably show up to CrossFit more because your friends are there. When you really truly choose friends who challenge you, who push you out of your comfort zone, you're taking a significant step towards personal growth and fulfillment. And ultimately, isn't that what everybody wants? Don't you want to be fulfilled? Don't you want to bring out your potential? Don't you think that every single one of your friends want to be fulfilled as well? And don't you think they also want to bring out the potential?

5:49And I really think that it's important to have brutal, loving honesty and a friendship. This is my own personal opinion, but I'm just going to give it to you, right? You might think that you don't want your friends to challenge you, that you want to prioritize keeping the peace. But if you do that, that encourages of stagnation and more than anything else kind of mediocrity. If our friends never challenge us and we never challenge them, we never push each other to be better, then we risk becoming too comfortable and too complacent. And so we risk remaining in our rut in the same place, never quite reaching our full potential.

6:24And so when I say challenge, I don't mean aggressive confrontation in your challenge or mean-spirited criticism in some sort of way, but for a loving challenge and guidance. Listen, man, you said you wanted to work out four times a week and get in better shape at the beginning of this year. That was five months ago. What are you doing? You gained weight? What are you going to do about it? How can I help hold you accountable to that? Listen, I love you too much to let you let go of yourself. You're not going to let go of yourself. I love you too much. It's happening. I'm going to push you to your goals.

7:00I love you too much not to hit your goals. You've got to get your shit together. You know, and I had a conversation with my wife about this a few months ago. We were talking about one of her friends and one of her friends and some stuff that's going on. And I was like, have you told her how you feel and kind of your viewpoint of what's going on? You know, she said she wanted to do this. She's not doing this. And she's like, no, I'm kind of afraid to. And I was like, well, if you're not going to say and reflect back to her what you are seeing and what she said she wanted to do, but she's not doing.

7:31If you're not going to reflect it back and she's one of your best friends, do you think anybody in her life is reflecting this back to her? I don't think so. Knowing that and who she surrounds herself, I was like, I don't think anybody else is going to say this to her.

7:49So yeah, friends are supposed to have fun together. There's, you know, it's not just, hey, we're only supposed to challenge each other, but it's like, it's supposed to have fun together. You're supposed to do things together. You're supposed to make you laugh, all of that type of stuff. But at the same time, like a friend, a real deep loving friend is like, I love you too much to not, I love you too much to not allow you to, not force you and help you get your shit together, to do what you said you wanted to do, to lose the weight that you said you wanted to. I'm not trying to make you into what I want you to be.

8:20I'm trying to make you into what you told me that you wanted to be. True friends should not tolerate mediocrity in one another. True friends keep each other at their edge, the edge of the comfort zone. You need to find more people or spend more time with people who live at their edge, because then it inspires you to live at your edge. I remember when I was first getting into developing my business and growing online and starting to understand that, I used to go to networking events, and I've shared this story before, this place that's here in Austin, and it's called Internet Marketing Party. And I would go there, and I had made$0 in my business online.

8:58I was just starting it. I would get around people that were making$10 ,000 a month,$50 ,000 a month, a couple hundred thousand dollars a month. And I was like, what in the hell is this? This is crazy. And really, just by being around them and developing friendships and going and getting coffee and meeting new people and co-working, it just expanded my mindset to what I thought was possible. It's kind of like learning a new language. where like if I grew up in America, I'm going to speak English. But if I grew up in Italy, I'm going to speak Italian. And so it's kind of the same thing where it's like I had never grown my business online.

9:35I wasn't able to speak that language. But as I was around them and I started to get pieces of what they were talking about and the ways that they challenged themselves and how they used ClickFunnels and how they wrote copy and how they started doing, I was like, oh, I'm picking up little pieces as if I just moved to Italy and I'm starting to pick up pieces of the words that they're saying. That's what happens when you surround yourself with people that are like that, that are just a little bit different, that are a little outside of your comfort zone. The people that we surround ourselves with significantly impact our lives.

10:05That's why it's so important for us to choose our friends wisely. And I hope you take this the right way. But not everybody deserves your time. And that's okay. And there are some people, and I've done this before, where I've kept friends around for a really long time, just simply because of the fact that we had history together. But it was kind of like, we both had the feeling that this relationship was almost over. It was like almost like time to turn a page. And I always say, you don't have to get rid of people in your life unless you feel like you need to. You don't have to get rid of people, but can you just for the next few months, pull back time with some people and then give more time to other people?

10:41Can you, some of you guys are sitting there and saying, yeah, but I don't have any friends who challenge me. I don't have any people that I know who are making themselves better. Okay, find them. Where are they at? You want to get better at your working out? Go to the gym and hang out there. Find a person who's really fit. Strike up a conversation with them. Go to, like I said, CrossFit or something like that. Go do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Do something. Go to a boxing club. Whatever it is that you want to, that's something that you're interested in, start talking to other people. I guarantee you'll make a couple of friends.

11:12That's just kind of how it goes. You're in a self-development? Okay, go to some conferences. Who's your favorite person that you listen to? Who book you read? Do they have conferences? Do they have groups or communities that they've built, even online, where you can start to connect with other people like them? All you really need is a couple friends who challenge you and challenge your worldview, who live at their edge, who face their fears, and just live a little bit beyond those. I have a friend who really challenged my beliefs at one point where, you know, he was extremely, I keep saying was like he's dead.

11:47He's not dead. He challenged me in the sense that he was almost 20 years older than me and in way better shape than me. And I was like, what am I doing? I just, he's, he's way more successful than, than I am. He's definitely busier than I am. And he's way more fit. And so I was just like, Hey man, can I start coming over to your house and work out with you? He's like, yeah, absolutely. Cool. he's got a gym that's off to the side of his house. We just worked out together, got in better shape, started being around him, learning from him, seeing what he does, how he interacts with the world. He's got a great marriage.

12:18He's got a great relationship with his children, all of this stuff. And I just started learning from being around him. The thing that I think is important as we start to look at this is there are people who are, let me put it this way. There are people who are masculine and people who are feminine as well. I have a friend, and when I say masculine, notice I'm not saying man or woman. We all have masculine qualities. We all have feminine qualities. So like a masculine qualities are push, challenge, grow, get out of your comfort zone. Feminine quality is like love, acceptance, hold space for emotions.

12:54There are people out there who represent the masculine and feminine very well. I have one friend I'm thinking of specifically. he is yeah about 16 years older than me and he is well he's also he's also another person who's way more fit than i am as well damn it i have these friends that are older than me that are way more fit and he is the perfect blend that i've seen in somebody of masculine and feminine like he is extremely loving like way more loving than i've ever seen than almost any other man in a like friendship but also at the same time is like hey motherfucker get your shit together like he will talk to me that way at the times when I need him to talk to me that way.

13:34And so, you know, start to find people who are as loving as you want to be, who, who have, uh, you know, accept you, who hold space for all of your emotions. Find friends that challenge you, that push you, that help you grow, that help you get out of your comfort zone, that expand your worldview of what's possible. You know, when you're friends with somebody and they're like, you know what, I'm going to go travel. I'm going to run my business and travel for three months out of the country. It makes you go, huh? I wonder if I could do that. Like just people that just think differently. You know, they give you different perspectives in life.

14:03They listen to you. They give you another perspective. They support you and guide you when you feel like you need it. And a lot of times these types of people can be honest mirrors and show you your strengths and show you your weaknesses, not criticize you, but help you really understand yourself a whole lot better. And they can suggest like concrete actions, not to control your life, but to go, you know what? Like, I think that this could help you out if you did this and help you get your potential to come out of you more. So how do you get friendships like this? Most people are asking this, right?

14:33Oh, I live in a place where I don't have any friends like this. I've never had friends like that. Honestly, here's what it comes down to. And you're listening to this podcast, so you're already starting on this path, but you need to step up your life to attract people like this. Friends who challenge each other and help each other grow and, you know, refine your character and all of that type of stuff is you are going to attract the type of people that you are. So if you're looking at yourself and you're going, oh my gosh, I don't know if I could attract this type of person. Well, how can you be better?

15:01How can you level yourself up? How can you start going, you know what? I do need to be in better shape. I'm going to start finding some friends that are in incredible shape. What am I going to do? I'm going to go to this gym. I'm going to work out three times a week, no matter what. If you want to attract people like this, then you need to also get it together. If you want to attract people like that, guess what? They want to attract people like that. So what do you offer? I'm sure you offer some great things. How can you get better? How can you challenge yourself? How can you push yourself to grow?

15:31Because once you start to grow and you get that energy of like, I'm growing, I'm improving, I'm growing, I'm improving, and you start getting around other people who are thinking the same way, naturally like magnets, you're going to start to attract to each other. And so once again, this isn't an episode saying, hey, you need to get rid of everyone that's in your life and you start over from scratch. I'm just saying just be a little bit more Be a little have a little bit more of a filter of the people that you allow yourself to be around and just try it out for six months and Just take some space from some people to spend some more time with other people Put some new people in place and just see how your life starts to change your mindset starts to change your Perspective of life starts to change when you hang out with people who are good for you And then you show up as a type of person who's good for them So that's what I got for you for today's episode.

16:16If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories, tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. If you're the type of person who loves Mindset Mentor, you'd absolutely love something that we just launched called Mindset Mentor Plus. This is how it works. For every episode that comes out of the Mindset Mentor podcast right here that you're listening to, Mindset Mentor Plus subscribers get a whole lot more. Mindset Mentor Plus subscribers get detailed worksheets, three, four, five pages sometimes, that you can print out for every single podcast episode that goes deeper than just the podcast episodes.

16:46You can underline it. You can highlight it. You can make your notes on it. There's journaling questions in it, so you can integrate these into your life. There's assignments, so you can integrate them deeper into your life. There's a Q &A every single month that I've run live with everybody who's inside of Mindset Mentor Plus, and there's a whole lot more that come with it as well. So if you're looking to integrate every single one of these episodes and learn more about yourself, grow yourself faster and improve your life faster as well, go to mindsetmentor.com. There's a video up there that explains everything to make sure that it's right for you.

17:17Once again, it is mindsetmentor.com. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission. Make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.