Your Friends are Your Future

Recently I watched a documentary in the ESPN 30 for 30 series about Maurice Clarett and Jim Tressel called Youngstown Boys.  It centered primarily on Maurice’s tumultuous experience playing football at The Ohio State University and how he was tied to his coach there, Jim Tressel, both from the city of Youngstown, OH.  It was very intriguing, and in the end, inspirational documentary about never giving up.  But something he said during a clip of a speech really stuck out to me, causing me to write this week’s blog.  In response to how he stays strong and on a new path in life, he said, “Show me your friends; I’ll show you your future.”  It was a very brief statement but so very true and insightful.

Maurice’s statement was precisely yet implicitly getting at what friends and colleagues are, your support network.  A solid support network is so crucial to success because as Maurice said, it can determine your future.  I’ve talked about being your own CEO before in a previous blog and making sure you have a strong board of directors that you can depend on for constructive feedback, and directional support as you try to achieve your goals and stay motivated on the path to success.  However, now with his statement, this is getting more at the grass roots and expanding it to the ‘employees’ in that analogy. 

As we traverse on our various paths in life, it’s important that as we are surrounding ourselves with people who lift us up and help motivate us to follow our goals.  It is vital that these people that we interact with on almost an everyday basis are the kind of people that share your values, aspire to do great things, and can positively encourage you during your journey.  More importantly it’s crucial that through their actions and words they are positively influencing you to be who you want to become.  Your basic everyday interactions with your friends can work as a cumulative influential effect when it comes to even the tiniest decisions that you make in life.

We’ve all heard the cliché statement “crabs in a barrel” in regards to those we surround ourselves with pulling us down.  The same is legitimately and conversely true for helping us up out of the barrel if we are trying to be successful and change our circumstances for the better.  There is a challenge of maintaining relationships with where we have come from and not abandoning those friends that were in our lives as we were growing up.  What I would assert is that if these people are still in your life, think about how they influence you and the role that they play.  In addition to this, we all have friends of a wide variety of backgrounds, cultures and some have values that we may disagree with.  That’s the benefit of knowing diverse people who can challenge you to grow.  The danger is when those people do not align with being beneficial to who you desire to be in your own life.