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Surrounding yourself with successful people, you will become just as successful? I've always had people say to this to me, but I don't know how true this is.
No, I don't believe that's a given. Sometimes good things will happen, sometimes they won't. Better circumstances can help people, absolutely they can--not that they will. What the person has inside is what is ultimately important.
Well, hold on a minute there! My last supervisor told me that he started playing golf so he could get closer to upper management on the job. To "kiss butt" or just know them better/be friends, I really don't know. I do know that it sure looked like it worked! He was a supervisor, but acted more like he owned the company. He would go to a local Driving Range for a couple of hours in the AM during the summer months and take his car in for an oil change also......with no upper management contacting him about anything. He would also leave a few hours early sometimes and again....no upper management called him! I knew where he was because he TOOK me to the Driving Range one morning.
It's a concept just like hanging out with smart people will make you smarter, or hanging out with loser's will keep you down. If you hang out with a certain type of person you typically elevate or drop to their level. It's not something etched in stone, just a loose theory.
I've known people who come from 'money' and their families are knowledgeable in how to guide them (teaching them to save, how to invest, how to score a good job).
They pass on this wisdom and you 'just knew' these individuals would not be mopping the floors at McDonalds.
Part of it was that their parents were actually HARD ON THEM and a few were popping the antacids in college.
Did they work harder? No, not really. They just know how to accumulate and keep wealth thanks to advice and being wily.
It's a bit of a loaded question as, if you're talking success in terms of financial status, somebody who's financially successful isn't necessarily a good human being. Over quite a long life thus far I've known and do know now many extremely wealthy people who've achieved their wealth and subsequent social status by amorally and indiscriminately trampling on the backs of others.
On the other hand, those I've known and know who've been successful where general relationships are concerned and who have a genuine interest in the well-being of their fellow men are people who have something positive to offer where "success" is concerned and are role models for what can be if you take the time to not only ask but listen and hear. Many of them learned through the school of hard knocks what works and what doesn't work.
Of course on the other side of the coin, if you hang out with substance abusers and sexual predators then ...
It's not just a bandied-about truism that you're known by the company you keep but I suppose I don't whole-heartedly agree that surrounding yourself with "successful" people is a guarantee that you'll in turn become just as successful. You can learn from everybody who crosses your path whether they be the disenfranchised street person who basically gave up to the entrepreneur who followed a dream and made it - and all inbetween.
An often recurring theme on this Relationship forum's posts is self-centeredness. WHY doesn't he/she think this way, WHY can't I find the right match, WHY don't I have any friends, WHY does this person keep doing this to me, WHY do people treat me this way when I've done nothing to deserve it?
Answers are given and ignored, helpful posters who take the time to respond are designated as attackers who just don't understand.
The posters who ask, "HOW?" are probably the ones who benefit the most because they come onto this forum knowing there's a problem and want to make a change, are open to suggestions and follow through. Sometimes those people disappear after having received advice, sift through everything and then come back a month or so later with a positive update which is always gratifying to hear. Others just disappear and we never know what happened to them. (Although some of them do reappear several months later with a repetition of the same old same old!)
Oops, sorry to have rambled on but hope I helped answer your question at least a bit. Cheers!
PS: By the time I posted this you had lots of good responses!
Last edited by STT Resident; 04-07-2010 at 07:33 AM..
Reason: Added a PS
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