“You are the average of the 5 people you most spend time with.” Jim Rohn

The people you choose to surround yourself with have a huge effect on who you are and how you live your life.

But whereas your friends and family all make up a big part of this group of people, these days you don’t have to physically spend time in a person’s company to be influenced by them.

In fact, they might not even know who you are.

Expand Your Horizons

These days, as well as people we know personally, we are influenced by the people we follow online. For example, you may follow someone’s social media account along with thousands of other people.

They may have no idea who you are, but they can still influence your beliefs and practices in a profound way. You can simply tune in every day and get support and inspiration from them when it suits you.

This provides us with an enormous opportunity to grow and develop. We are no longer limited to the people physically near us. Instead, we can get inspiration from people anywhere in the world to help us reach our goals.

In short, you can create your own community without any of the restrictions that used to be in place.

The Power of Community

Communities can be a powerful way to develop skills and overcome challenges. We can find support in communities. We can find answers to problems. We can learn new skills and new ways of looking at the world.

You may already be involved in a number of online communities. You can join productivity communities consisting of people from all over the world. You might sign up to webinars held thousands of miles away where you can get specialist advice from experts.

With communities, you can pose questions, get answers and find inspiration.

Choose Your Communities with Care

With so much choice, it’s well worth thinking carefully about the people you decide to follow. Because when you surround yourself with inspirational people, this will rub off on you.

Spend time seeking out people with drive and ambition, people who want to succeed, as well as people who have already succeeded.

For example, if you want to start a business, joining an entrepreneurial community will allow you to get advice from successful entrepreneurs, as well as support from those in the same position as you.

Be inspired by finding out how other people faced similar challenges to you and how they overcame them.

Other people’s success can be a big inspiration. Everyone gets a little jealous when someone has already achieved what they want to – the secret is to be inspired by their achievement and realise that if they can do it, so can you.

Seek Out Your Mentors

When you see an incredibly successful person, either in business, sport, music or anything else, you will often find that they did not do it alone.

Talent may have given them a boost, as we looked at in the previous blog, but success involves more than just talent.

One thing that they all have in common is access to great mentors. Many of the greatest athletes, musicians and artists had the right mentors to help them on their journeys. Even Mozart was fortunate to have his father as a mentor, a forward-thinking man with an innovative attitude.

But in this day and age, you don’t need the good luck of having a mentor in your life: you can make your own luck.

You can pick and choose your mentors from online communities. They could be experts who have achieved amazing things, or they could be people just like you who have excellent ideas to share and inspiration to provide.

Know What You Can and Cannot Control

The thing that you have to realise when you are looking for support, advice and inspiration, is to focus on what you CAN control, and not what you can’t.

This is a choice that you can make. Don’t worry about what you don’t have, and all the opportunities that you did not have during your life. If you want to be successful, you can be. You just need to take control.

Seek out mentors. Look for inspirational people to follow. Surround yourself by inspirational people and absorb their knowledge, advice and support, wherever they are located.

When you do this, you’ll find that anything is possible.