Who’s in Your Fab Five?

I believe we are the average or sum total of the five people we associate with most often.

I once heard that your income is actually the average of your five closest friends. And while financial results are one way of measuring our well-being – although not the best – I am intrigued by this concept of who we spend the most time with, and believe we should consciously choose who those people might be.

Some leaders and writers suggest dropping people from your “Fab Five” who are negative or consistently rain on your parade with the negative energy of what can’t be done. While this is certainly one option, I would suggest there is another, more helpful possibility to consider – one that would involve helping them shift their mindsets, beliefs, and attitudes to be more positive in nature. You can help them reframe their energy by asking open-ended empowering questions, and you can acknowledge and validate their frustrations so that they can move through and beyond them.

By doing this you could become a transition person in your family, organization, and community, raising the average energy of each of the people you interact with most frequently, and in so doing, raising your own.