#255 Solo episode: Use the power of proximity to your advantage.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

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Please note that while an effort is made to provide an accurate transcription, errors and omissions may be present. No part of this transcription can be referenced or reproduced without permission.

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Welcome to Personal Development mastery podcast episode 255. Today is a short solo episode, where I'm going to discuss proximity and how to use the power of proximity to your advantage.

And when I say proximity, I mean with the people around us, the people that we surround ourselves with. There has been research showing that the peer group, the people who are around us, is the most crucial factor that influences our life. And if you think about it, you will probably find it to be true.

Who is around us, what do people around us say and do has a tremendous impact on what we do. 

So in this short episode today, I will discuss proximity from three points of view: Peer groups, Mentors, and MM groups. The first one, our peer group, simply put is the people around us, the people who we surround ourselves with. The second one, mentors and coaches, are people who are a bit ahead of us in the journey of life or in a particular aspect, and they can teach us or guide us towards the direction we want to go. And the third point of view that I will discuss proximity from is mastermind groups, which is a superb way of being around peers that support our growth. A MM group also helps with keeping us accountable - and I will digress here for a moment and say that accountability is critical in making sustainable and long lasting progress. As a matter of fact, I will record a podcast episode soon specifically about the importance of accountability.

Coming back to proximity - I will first talk about peer groups. The author and speaker Jim Rohn famously said, You are the average of the five people you spend most of your time with. And if you consider this statement carefully, you will realise its truth. Let me give a general example. Let's say that you spend a lot of time with people who like exercising, eating healthy, and having this kind of outlook on life, valuing health. What do you think are the chances that you will eventually go towards a healthier lifestyle and exercising as well? The possibility is very high because your peer group will influence you and you will become the average of these people that you're around. Of course, the opposite also happens. So if your peers don't care about nutrition or exercise, and they eat junk food and smoke cigarettes, eventually that will influence you as well and you will become the average of that. So we must be mindful of who is in our peer group, especially those five people that we spend most of our time with. And sometimes these are members of our family, sometimes co-workers, sometimes friends.

And I will put an action point here for you: Make a list of these five people, either mentally or even better write it on paper. This way you can identify who are your biggest influences. From then on, you can make the necessary adjustments and have more people in this top-5 that we would actually want to be positively influenced by.

Let's discuss now the second perspective of proximity, which is mentors, coaches, or you could call them role models. These are the people who inspire us, who influence and who support us, but also people who we admire and trust. Think of it like this: in life, each of us is the hero of our own journey. Along this journey, there come people who have been there before, they are in a way ahead of us, and they guide us in the direction we want to go. This concept is ubiquitous in movies, for example, Frodo in The Lord of the Rings had Gandalf as a guide, or Neo in the Matrix has Morpheus as his mentor, etc. If you notice there is always someone guiding the hero towards their destination. And these are usually people who have been there and done what we want to do before us or they possess some other skills or elements that can help us accelerate our progress towards the direction we want to go.

And I will put again an action point here for you: List a handful of people who you think could be the right role model or mentor for you, and write down what are the characteristics of them that make them ideal for you. Write down what do they like, dislike, support you with etc.

And so, the third and final perspective of proximity that I’ll discuss with you today is mastermind groups. A MM group is a group of like minded people all working collectively in harmony for mutual benefit utilising the power of collecting wisdom. This sounds like a mouthful - so to put it more simply, it is a group of people who commit to each other's success, forming a cooperative alliance and coordinating their knowledge and efforts towards a specific goal. 

Mastermind groups are a big topic and I'm actually going to record a separate podcast episode discussing mastermind groups in particular.

So this was my solo episode today. Proximity is power - the people we surround ourselves with. 

If you want to achieve something, a great way to accelerate your progress is to put yourself in proximity with people who've done it, who have achieved it.

And let me repeat once again the action points of this episode for you:

The first is to write down a list of the five people that you spend the most time with. And the second one is regarding mentors: list five people who you feel are the right role model for you and write down what are the characteristics that they have that makes them a good match for you?

And talking about mentors, I do offer one-to-one mentorships on mindset, personal development and also podcasting. So if I match those characteristics that you’ve written on your list, go to my website or message me, and we can discuss it further. 

Thank you for listening. I hope you got great value from today's episode. And if you'd be so kind, would you please take a moment to leave me in Apple podcasts or Spotify review, sharing how personal development mastery has made a difference to you today.

Until next time, stand out, don't fit in!