Are your surrounding influences supporting your goals?

Are the people in your environment supporting or wrecking your goals? Time and time again I see situations where someone’s goals are wrecked by the people in their environment. People get committed, they get really focused on what they want, and they take action…. then they slip back into their old habits. They don’t manage to reach that amazing goal they were so excited about.

Why is this happening? It’s their environment, or, as we call them, their surrounding influences.

For me, the surrounding influences in people’s lives are one of the biggest reasons why people don’t follow through. When they don’t get their surrounding influences correct, this is what causes them to slip back into their old patterns and beliefs.

What do we mean by Surrounding Influences?

Surrounding Influences are the people you hang out with, the people you spend your time with, whether at home, work, friends, gym, or in the community. When you spend time with them you unconsciously pick up their values and beliefs and use these values and beliefs to shape your behaviour.

If your behaviour is not getting you the results you want, stop and consider your surrounding influences. Ask yourself, “Is my environment supporting me and the goals I want to achieve.” Think about it, you might have gym friends, and with your gym friends (or your fitness friends) you probably behave very well and your health habits might be very good around them.

But you might also have (or had in the past) some drinking friends, and with them you drank a lot and had a really good time, without worrying about the consequences for your health.

See how differently you behave in those different circles?

By no means am I saying you need to kick people out of your life, that’s not what this is about. What I am saying is, you need to expand your network so you can have some really supportive people in it, people who will hold you to a higher standard.

Are your Surrounding Influences preventing you from finding the one?

Let’s look at relationships as an example. How many people out there who are single, hang out with their single friends? The end result is they all remain single!
The reason for this is for them to be single, they must have certain values and beliefs around relationships.

So if you are single and you are looking for that relationship, find people who have amazing relationships and spend time with them. You don’t need to ask them how they do it, you just need to be in their company on a regular basis as you will start to unconsciously pick up their values and beliefs which will create new behaviours around relationships.

Five-by-Five Surrounding Influences

When I first attended Live it Now, Matt told us that we should go and find our ‘five-by-five’. What five-by-five means is five people who are operating at a level five times the level of the goal you want to achieve.

This concept of surrounding influence was something that really, really jumped out for me. At the time I was working in a corporate environment and, whilst I had been made redundant, I still had 18 months to work with the organisation, but I wanted to be a Coach. I suddenly realised that to be the best coach that I could be, I needed to change my environment. I wasn’t going to be the coach I wanted to be while working in that corporate environment. I went in search of my five-by-five.

My goal was to be the best coach I could be, so I actually approached Matt and said, “I want to come and work with you.” Matt looked at me and laughed as he said, “Bianca, we’re currently not hiring.” I looked him straight in the eye and said, “Matt, I totally get that, but you have taught me that, in order for me to be the best I can be, I need to hang out with people who are achieving what I want at five times my level, and that’s you!“

I was looking at the bigger picture and knew that sometimes you have to put a little bit more effort into the beginning to reap the rewards in the end. I was willing to do whatever it took to get there. So I gave Matt a business case. He looked at it and said, “Look, you can start in the New Year (this was around October) but you are going to be starting off in the contact centre, making calls to people.”

I said, “Done.”

I then went back into my corporate job and I renegotiated an early redundancy and I started working with Your Future Now in the New Year!

In that first three months, I worked really hard in the contact centre and I slowly started coaching people. Because I was around the people and coaches in the company who were getting great results, I started getting really great results with the people I was coaching. Three months later I was coaching full-time. Within two years I was the Head Coach of the company and within five years I was promoted to General Manager.

Now, the reason I was able to achieve this, was because I changed the environment I was in. I still had all my same friends, and yes, a few of them organically just moved on, but that’s quite normal, you know there’s that saying:

‘People come into your life for Reasons, Seasons, and Lifetimes…’

To get the best results you need to go beyond the five-by-five. The best way to ensure you have the right support around you is to follow all the surrounding influence steps.

Surrounding Influence Mastermind Groups

The next step to making sure your environment supports you is to create a Mastermind Group. Find people who are interested in the same things you are, people who have the same passions and goals, and hang out with them!

So with your Mastermind Group, think about people you know who have similar interests to you. If you are into personal development, attend personal development seminars and make sure you keep in contact with the people you meet there. If your goal is around business, join networking groups of people who are focussing on their business growth.

This is in addition to your five-by-five.

That is what I do when I attend trainings. I leave courses and I keep hanging out with the people I’ve met at that course. I’m still friends today with the two girls I sat between at Live It Now back in August 2010 and we are all getting great results because we all have similar belief systems.

Surrounding Influence Mentoring

Get yourself one-on-one mentoring. When you have someone that’s working with you one-on-one, you are unconsciously going to pick up their values and beliefs. By picking up those values and beliefs, you are going to create better behaviour.

We can all go to the gym and we all know how to exercise ourselves, but if we are working with a Personal Trainer, we start taking on their behaviour and we are more conscious of what we are doing.

The exact same thing happens when you are working with a coach or mentor! Find that person you want to work with on a one-on-basis and catch up with them at least fortnightly. That’s the fastest way to get results.

Proven Results

The last step, but certainly not the least, is when you are ready to invest your time and money in personal development and want to find your five-by-five, find your Mastermind Group, and find a mentor or coach, make sure you invest in trainings with PROVEN RESULTS.

There are so many trainings out there, whether they are NLP based, public speaking, setting up a business, coaching training, and more. To know which one to choose, look at the testimonials coming through, look at the results people are getting from these courses. If their graduates are getting great results you know you are with the right company.

If they are not advertising results, their graduates are not getting great results, or even if they have a cheaper price, ask yourself, are they going to be able to get you to where you want to be? Are they going to be able to be part of that Mastermind Group or provide the one-on-one mentoring that holds you to that higher standard?

When you’re thinking about your goals and what it is you want to achieve in life, I can’t stress enough the importance of having that supporting environment and the best surrounding influences you can find.

To learn more about Surrounding Influences, come to Live It Now where I share further information that will help you to build your Mastermind Group and start applying these strategies.

Bianca van Riet – Your Future Now

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