Follow Successful People

When I was a kid, my mom always warned me to be careful of who my friends were and who I hung out with.  If I hung out with friends in high school who were 'easy' or had a reputation to sleep around a lot, then hanging out with these people will naturally associate the same traits to me.  Other people will judge me based on the people I surround myself with.  She is right and it's true for every aspect of your life.  You want to surround yourself with others that are inspiring and live life the way you want to live your life. 

I'm sure a lot of us have heard this type of thing before.  This doesn't mean that you don't talk to other people who are struggling or in a different situation from yourself.  When people you come across seem to continue to blame others for their own struggles, after a while it's hard to relate to someone who is holding themselves back from being successful.  You will naturally gravitate towards people that share the same interests and are headed in the same direction you are headed because people motivate each other and create energy that isn't always there on an individual basis.  Therefore, follow people who you can relate to or have achieved successes in life that are important to you and follow values and methods you can believe in.

Finance is not about creating new and innovative ways of making and saving money.  The rules and guidelines that are needed to be financially responsible are the same things that our ancestors have taught one another and their ancestors before them.  As I get older, I find that many things in life have nothing to do with 'new' ways of doing things.  I find that throughout life, reminding ourselves of lessons we most likely learned as children and young adults are the same lessons we struggle to follow when we get married and have children.  I'm not old enough to know stages in life past this but I listen to a lot of other generations (old, young, peers) to avoid mistakes I don't want to experience first hand. 

I have a couple siblings that insist I don't know what I'm talking about because they are older & have experienced more than me.  Are you kidding?  Do you think I want to go through the same struggles in order to understand that it was a bad idea in the first place?  That's a silly way of thinking, right?  If I see someone being punished & fined for stealing shoes from a store when they are a teenager, does that mean I don't understand the consequences because I didn't go through the situation myself?  Of course not.  If I see how a sibling has hurt my parents in some way with actions or words, then it's in my best interest not to repeat the same actions because then I will have a different outcome with my parents.  If we're lucky enough (& pay attention to others around us), we don't have to experience certain hardships to know that we want to avoid them to be successful.  I certainly don't need to claim bankruptcy to know that it creates a lasting affect on my life and would be a long time before I had good credit again.

I believe that some lessons have to be learned first-hand in order to understand the importance of them.  However, I think I've learned much more by watching and learning from other people's mistakes then my own for a couple different reasons.  First, I can look at someone else's situation objectively and limit how emotionally involved I am.  Second, when I am not directly involved with a difficult situation, I get several different perspectives from various people because these people involved want to vent, get advice or attempt to win 'votes' on their version of the situation.  Third, I don't have to pay the consequences of the results of my actions because I wasn't involved in the situation.  This last one is an automatic WIN situation for me since I get to see what has happened to someone else and understand that certain situations are not worth replicating.  Lastly, when witnessing or knowing about how a life-lesson resulted for someone else can give me the advantage if I need to eventually deal with a similar situation later, whether its with the same person or just a similar situation with new people.  I can gauge what is may occur by what has already happened to someone else. 

To me, this blog is a very easy concept and I feel like I'm writing about something that everyone already knows.  However, I'm slowly starting to learn that some things I think everyone already knows are not really things that everyone knows.  We all talk about 'common sense' and I always joke that there is no such thing.  I worked with someone in the last year who thought it was OK to answer your cell phone when you are in the middle of one-on-one training.  I was completely flabbergasted by such an action, but this woman was insulted that I was so angry about her actions.  I quickly realized that I hold the time I have at work with much higher regard then others or at least this woman.  If I am at work getting paid to do certain tasks that were part of my role than that is higher priority than answering my cell phone to talk about personal matters that are not urgent and relate to time after I leave my job.  If someone else is training me to do a certain job and I answer my cell phone, I'm not only now wasting my time at work but also the person who is training me.  However, I was made well-aware that this was not a 'common sense' action.  So I stand corrected, and now I am learning to talk about things that I once thought were so obvious to the general population.