Most of us have probably heard the phrase “you are who you surround yourself with,” and I never really thought about what that actually means. I just guessed that it meant that if the people around me are decent people, then I must be a decent person too.
While that is true, it’s a little deeper than that. I used to surround myself with different people than who I surround myself with today, and I’ve noticed an immense difference.
Up until my second semester of my sophomore year of college, I was close with a few of my friends from high school. Now I’m almost done with sophomore year, and the only person from high school that I’m still close with is my best friend.
I don’t need to wonder why that is. Aside from the fact that we’ve been best friends since the first day of freshman year, she and I share a very similar mindset and have similar priorities (which is probably one of the many reasons why we’ve been best friends for so long).
The other people that I used to be friends with are good people, but I believe that I’m heading in too different a direction than where they’re heading. I began to realize that I needed to make some necessary changes in my life.
This semester, I’ve surrounded myself with an entirely different group of people that I met through campus organizations. Ever since I started to become more involved on campus and meet new people, I’ve noticed a huge difference in myself.
Being around people who want to do their best and do everything possible to accomplish their goals makes me want to do the same.
It’s made me realize how important it is to surround myself with people who make me more motivated, and that the saying ‘you are who you surround yourself with’ has a lot of truth in it.
It’s like when someone says that they study better when they’re at the library (or in any environment where people are working). When everyone around me is doing homework and studying, I’m more likely to as well.
When everyone around me is striving to reach their highest potential, I’m a lot more likely to strive to reach mine.
I think one of the reasons behind that could be that because I see other people putting in the work, I believe that I can too. It might sound a little silly, but think about it: if you see someone else do something, you might think well if they can do it, I can do it.
I’m not saying that who you surround yourself with is an exact representation of who you are. Everyone is different, and everyone has many different qualities that make them unique. All I’m saying is that they reflect, at the very least, a little bit of who you are.