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FRIENDS = FUTURE

There’s an old expression that goes, “show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future.” What it means is that the direction your closest friends are headed in life is inevitably the direction your life is going to go too. It’s human nature: we want to fit in, we want to go with the flow, and that “flow” is determined by the people we allow closest to us. 

You may disagree. You may say, “that’s just some peer-pressure hating, fear-mongering nonsense, and I’m stronger than the influence of my friends.” I hear you…I’ve said the same thing before. But I’ve also watched myself go down some pretty unexpected paths because of the people I chose to hang with. It doesn’t matter how strong you think you are, if the people closest to you are going somewhere, you’ll eventually go there too. And I’m not talking about your whole school, or the random kid who sits next to you in math class…I’m talking about those few people you consider your closest friends. Those are the ones we need to choose especially carefully. 

So, where are your friends headed? If you sit back and look at their lives, are they living the way you want to live? Are they making the kinds of choices you want to make? If the answer is no, be very careful. You may think you aren’t going along with them right now, but it happens much more subtly than you might think. If you keep hanging out with that same group, a couple years from now you’ll be surprised at where you’ve ended up.