“Hang around with people who are better than you
are,” Warren Buffett
Another great quote from the Midwestern Yoda! As he has
been so aptly named.
I have always believed this concept to be true. Hanging out with people who are better than
you, leads to you bettering yourself. As the same concept is true- hanging out
with ne’er do wells usually leads kids down the wrong path, as did hangin’ out
with the “wrong crowd.” You always hear
the neighbor on the news saying “Well he was a good kid until he started
hanging out with the wrong crowd,” after some heinous crime.
So shouldn’t the same concept be true for hangin’ out
with people who are better than you? I don’t think he meant better than you in
the snobbish way. But rather, better than you as a person, as someone who has
more education, more training or even a better job than you. What it does for us is it makes us want to do
better. When we hang out with people who
are achieving amazing things, we want to achieve those things too.
Why not take that concept and use it find people that you
want to be like. As a young college
student I always looked for mentors at school, women who could teach me to be
like they were. I did this when I got out into the world of work. My mentor was
someone who ran a nonprofit. I knew one day I would do the same thing, so I
watched her, who she worked with, how she handled situations, and how she
resolved conflict and moved up. This
served me well as I was growing into my career.
Who we hang out with as friends and colleagues can have a
huge impact on what we do. So, look
around and decide, am I hanging out with the people who make me want to be a
better person? If not, maybe you need to start keeping better company.
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