What is your daily environment like? Where do you go and who do you associate yourself with most often? It's important that you evaluate your environment if you truly want to grow and be who you are meant to be. The people you associate yourself with can either help your growth or hinder it altogether. I know you've heard the quote, "You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with," and whether you choose to believe it or not I think it's true. We often pick up sayings and behaviors from these people so be very wary about the company you keep.

You need to study the people you associate yourself with. What are their goals? Do your goals match theirs? Where do they want to be in five years and where do you want to be in five years? Do they hold you to a higher standard than you hold yourself? These are all questions you need to ask yourself when deciding what kind of relationship you want to have with someone. I'm not saying you shouldn't associate yourself with people that don't share the same vision as you, that's outlandish. I'm saying you should pull the people with the same vision as you close and push the people that don't share that vision a little further away to make room. Yes, I know how that sounds. I'm literally telling you to take some friends you've known for a long time that have helped you through a lot and decide whether or not you should be associating yourself with them.

I know that's easier said than done. It's hard to look at someone you've known for years and say, "I don't want to go where you're going so I'm going to limit the time we spend together and focus on my personal growth," but it's extremely necessary if you want to achieve your fullest potential while on Earth. It's important that you fill your environment with people who hold you to a higher standard than you hold yourself. You should learn on a daily basis from the people around you. You should feed off of them and they should feed off of you, it should be a give-and-take relationship where both sides win. Your conversations with these people should be full of motivation and affirmation.

Don't feel bad because you want to focus on your growth and change your environment to match where you want to go. There will be people that will not understand and that's something you can't control so treat it as noise.