There’s a saying which has mostly been doing the rounds in the realms of personal financial management and I suppose business as well, which is that if you “Show me your friends, I’ll show you who you are.” Perhaps one which is closely related to this one and is even more directly applicable to the personal finances is that of how it’s believed that “If you hang out with five broke people, you’ll be the sixth broke person in your little group” and the same is true of the effects of hanging out with rich people.
Does this suggest that you should get new friends though? I mean the people whom you call your closest friends didn’t get that way by some Mickey-Mouse chance!
Since this is indeed a blog which deals more with health, fitness and lifestyle issues, I beg to apply the abovementioned principles accordingly to the health and fitness areas of our lifestyles. If you have five obese friends, you’ll likely be the sixth obese friend in your group and if you have five friends who have healthy hearts because they occasionally play some kind of team sports to a competitive degree, guess who’s going to be the sixth person in the group with a healthy heart?
It’s you, isn’t it?
Friends, peers, family members, colleagues, relatives, etc, – any group of people with whom you spend most of your time will have a huge bearing on your lifestyle and your life, so there’s no getting away from the fact that it will definitely make for a challenge if you want to lead a much healthier lifestyle surrounded by loved-ones who are very far down the other way.
In the beginning you might quite inevitably have to go it alone. Change is hard and resistance to change comes as naturally as the sun rises and sets within a period of 24 hours. So if you have to dedicate an hour a day to some hard labour in the gym for example, be prepared to have to break away from the group temporarily and sometimes for longer periods of time as you pursue your positive, healthy-living lifestyle change.
The pressure is on you to deliver because your closest friends and loved ones are naturally forward like that, justifiably so too. They will ask you questions like “So Megan, you spend so much time at the gym but I don’t see your tummy flattening. Is gym a metaphor for a secret boyfriend or something?”
That’s some great pressure to be under because it’ll only serve to motivate you. If they see the results then it’ll be much easier to rope them in to join you on a journey that will only be of good to all of you.
Practice healthy-living in all areas of your life, from healthy gift ideas to give to all your friends and family when their special occasions come around, right up to something like signing the lot of you up to some fun physical activity whose health benefits are inherent and perhaps subtly hidden.
