You Are Known By The Company You Keep

All of us want to grow in life and be successful, isn’t it? Want to be known as a person of repute, an own identity, good colleague, good husband, good father and what not. The list can go on and on.

How do we achieve this?

I would like to take you back to our childhood memories of school

Your longingness to have your friend tiffin, coming back and telling our mother you want to have similar tiffin tomorrow?

Hanging around with friends having good grades in class, also hang around those friends whom we thought were better than us or to those where we had our interests.

Didn’t our parents told us to be like someone in our class? Didn’t they tell us dos and don’ts, whom to have friendship with; friends having good behaviour, good at studies and knowledgeable and not be with friends known to do mischief.

I hope many of us would agree to it. I too used to do this hang around such friends.

But Why? Was there any logic behind it? Let us understand why such recommendations.

An illustration. Do you recognize the figure displayed in Pic. 1:

How do you see this picture as? Is it 1, V & 1 or I, V&I or M or reverse W or V inside bracket or M cut from the top.

We see that there are few permutations and combinations that we can visualize in the Pic. 1.

But the same picture when added with a prefix and suffix, the complete visualization changes. Refer Pic. 2

Pic. 1 now seems to have a different meaning altogether and we conclude that it’s an alphabet “M” instead of numeric numbers & alphabet or different alphabets that we had perceived before.

The point here which I want to bring forward is that in real life “we as people are known by the company of people, whom we largely spend time with”.

Why is it necessary to have such associations in Life?

If you have read my earlier post mentioning quote 1: “Learn to let go such relationships which do not contribute to your life”.  I will explain this in the later part of this article.

Quote 2: “Your behaviour and thought process gets aligned to the group you are associated with, is determined by the amount of time you spend with the group”

Let us understand with an example:

1.      If you are a part of group who are health conscious, you too start thinking about your health and start adding value to your health.

2.      If you are part of a group who are innovative and thinks out of box the after some time your thought process gets inline with your group and your behaviour changes, thought changes. You start thinking differently.

3.      If you are in group who always crib and demean others your mentality also starts resonating like them after some time

Do you remember,  our parents used to coax us to have a good company and with colleagues who are better than.

How do we identify to which group one should choose from.

1.      Group-1 which is elite and has more knowledge than you.

OR

2.      Group-2 where you are knowledgeable than others.

If you join the elite group or people who are more knowledgeable than us. This adds value to you, since you learn more and start growing with your learnings. Here you may feel uncomfortable as your knowledge is lesser than the other people. To become comfortable within the group and for acceptance within the group you will strive harder and harder. You gain and come up to their level.

But suppose you are of a group where you are knowledgeable than others. You do not add value to yourself, instead the people who are associated with you add value to their profile.

You should choose group – 1 as it adds value to you and hep you realize your dreams and passion. “The Road To Success”

In group -2, You have to let go such relationships which I mentioned in my Quote:1

That’s how you choose the group you want to be in.

A simple saying is “There is no similarity between comfort and success. They are Pole apart.”