Mix with good people and become good people.

"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with." 

Jim Rohn.

The official adage is that you are the average of the five people that are closest to you. You want to improve your life, then surround yourself with people who have the same desire as you. Hang around with people who are working on improving their life… blah blah blah.

It's excellent advice. Honestly, I get it. But if you are not careful, then you could lose your own identity with this approach. You can end up living someone else's life. 

Everyone is unique. 

Yes. Please surround yourself with positive people. Make sure you are engaged in the conversation and that you take and you also contribute to the chatter. You will improve, and that is a fact. The ideas and positivity will brush off on you… fact!

Thin out your social media feeds, kick out the people who make you feel frustrated and inadequate and start following the positive feeds. By all means, crank that up to the maximum level and get that knowledge soaking into your very being…

But, yep, there is always a but.

But make sure you take the time to ask yourself where that idea, concept, action or value, whatever is the discussion piece, ask yourself, where does this fit in with my current life.

When you engage with the learning takeaways, you have to take the time to run them through your own internal interpretation of what is being discussed. You have to sense-check to see if it is of use to you now or in the future. You might spend time with the other great people in your life, but you spend the most time with yourself. 

You spend the most time with YOU.

Only you will know where all the insights fit within your own movie script. Take what you pick up from others and work it into your own writing, but make sure you can act the part with authenticity. 

There was nothing quite as cringe-worthy as watching Quentin Jerome Tarantino screw up his own movies because he cast himself into an acting part, asking himself to speak the words he couldn't carry off.

Don't act like Quentin Tarantino.

I had a conversation with a friend recently, and they were spouting all the things they had learned during the process that he was recently engaged in. He was working toward a specific employment goal. It was all good stuff he was chanting, but it wasn't him. It was someone else's words, and he was dancing to a different tune.

I had to stop him mid-flow and ask him to refrain from telling me the things he thought I wanted to hear and to tell me what he thought. What was his interpretation? What did he think of the time he had spent learning and to take that stuff and put it into his own words.

The words and music have to be in sync.

Listening and paying attention to other great people should be part of your personal development crusade but taking the time to really understand it is the worthy cause.

Focus on worthwhile work.

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