Monday, August 22, 2011

You Are The Average Of Your Friends

Friends are one of the best things in life.  They also influence you more than you may know.

A very wise man once told me that we are all the average of our five closest friends.  They influence our habits, our diet, our hobbies, our profession, and our income.

A common anecdote I've heard is that your income will be with in 10% of the average of your 10 closest friends.  I have no statistical evidence to back that up, but anecdotal evidence is everywhere.  Teachers hang out with teachers, actors hang out with actors, NBA stars hang out with NBA stars.  I'm not sure if correlation means causation here, and I'm sure most of us make friends from the people we work with.  But it's also true that similar types of people are drawn to similar types of work.  Many of my good friends from high school have also gone on to be teachers.

Whether it can be proven or not, the saying speaks to the importance of our friendships, and choosing good friends.  People that stimulate you, challenge you, support you, make you life, encourage and correct you are worth their weight in gold.  People that lead you into bad places and bad decisions (for some reason I'm thinking of Kesha right now), are worth their weight in something else.

And if we are the average of our friends, are we lifting our friends up?  Or are they lifting us up?  Something to think about.

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