May 5th, 2009 by Kevin Ngo
What’s the number one factor of success? What one thing can you do start doing today that will greatly improve your odds of living a more successful, happier, fulfilled life? This one small, yet powerful, key will literally change every aspect of your life for the better. All it takes from you is to make one important decision.
So what am I talking about here? What is this number one factor of success that only takes a decision yet can guarantee an improvement in your life not only financially, but physically, mentally, relationship wise, and everything else?
Here’s the answer in 3 words: Your Peer Group.
Your peer group is the group of people you spend most of your time with. If you want a good indicator of how your life will turn out, just examine your closest peers.
There’s a saying, “Birds of a feather flock together.” This means that people tend to associate with other people who are like them in characteristics and interests. Do you think the things you do, the habits you have, and what you’re interested in have an effect on certain aspects of your life? Of course.
I know this may seem like high school peer pressure mumbo jumbo but it’s not. Here’s an experiment you can do to prove that your peer group, those you spend the most time with, do in fact influence almost every aspect of your life.
The Proof
Take a look at your body. Now mentally compare it to your peers. If you’re a little on the heavy side, chances are, so are your closest friends. If you’re fit and working out everyday, chances are, so are your closest friends. Take a look at your income. Now compare it with your closest peers. Chances are that your income is probably no more than plus or minus ten percent from the average income of your closest peers.
Let’s look at your habits. If you smoke, chances are, so do your closest friends. If you complain a lot, chances are, they do as well. Look at how you dress, the activities you like to do, even your opinions on certain things, chances are, they’re similar to your closest peers.
Make the Decision
If you are unsatisfied with where you are in life right now, you must either get yourself to live at a higher standard and get your friends to do the same, or you must get new friends. I know that seems a bit harsh, but it’s an important decision you will have to make if you truly want to experience greater success in all areas of your life.
The reason why this is the number one factor of success is that when you surround yourself with people who have higher demand and expectations for themselves, you will naturally be pulled up to their level in regards to what you will demand of yourself. If the people you associate with all workout consistently and watch their diets, just to feel like you deserve to be around them, you will automatically start to do the same things.
The Hard Truth
I know people should accept you for who you are otherwise they’re not your real friends but the fact is that if you want to live your life at a higher standard, to require more from yourself than you’ve been demanding, you must step up your game.
If the friends you have now are all living at a lower standard than you want to experience, then in order to change your life, you must associate yourself with people who are already experiencing the life you want.
Hopefully, when your peers see that change in you, they will become inspired and start to live their lives at a higher level as well. So why can’t you just improve your life but stick with the same friends? When you start to improve your life, when you start to expect more from yourself, some of your peers may feel like you’re leaving them behind and may start to associate with you less or even try to bring you back down. It’s not because they don’t care about you, it’s just that they don’t want to lose you, and this will effect you.
It’s a decision that, for many, isn’t at all easy, but if you really want to make a change in your life, and you’re looking at your friends right now and saying to yourself, “I don’t want to be like them”, then you have to make that difficult decision. This doesn’t mean you can’t be friends with them, it just means you must spend less time with them and more time with people who live at a level you want to live at.
The number one factor of success, choosing the right peer group, admittedly isn’t an easy one to implement but maybe that’s why most people end up settling for a life of mediocrity instead of experiencing the life they’ve always felt they could obtain but never did.
“Sometimes you have to move on without certain people. If they’re meant to be in your life, they’ll catch up.” – Mandy Hale
Until next time…
Love Life. Do Good. Live Well.
Go from Number One Factor of Success to the Self Improvement page.
Personally I think the number one factor of success is being happy with yourself. If you know (and love) who you are, the success comes a lot more easily. However, there are some great points in this post. Thanks for writing it!
Being happy with yourself is definitely critical to success and it does make it easier, but happy or not, if you surround yourself with people with low standards, you can only go so far. Surrounding yourself with the right people can increase your sense of what's possible. Thanks for commenting.
You've touched on an important factor of success here. One of the necessary components of achieving is to raise your standards. Even if we have higher standards than our friends, we will “make allowances” in our mind for our friends' lower standards. What this will do is to break down our standards to a lower level. So, you are right! Birds of a feather do flock together! Thanks for the good read. 🙂
Your “make allowances” coment is so true. Most people do that without even realizing it. Thanks for the comment.
The hard truth is reality that we all must face. I am glad you wrote about these points. There are very few posts that I liked reading and yours is certainly one of them. My friend has a blog and she too writes beautifully.
Thanks for the compliments Hope. Sometimes it's easier to not believe this even though it could be the key that we're missing to become successful. The truth can be harsh sometimes but it is what it is.
Interesting article but the premise is absolutely, positively, 100% dead wrong!
Having the right peer group, loving yourself, being great decision-maker, living by higher standards, etc, etc, etc are all positive “aspects” of success but they're certainly not the number one factor. The number one of success (hands down) is: DESIRE!
All the other factors mentioned are supportive components of success — but without the DESIRE to go to the next level, NOTHING else happens. In fact, it took desire for you to get be where you are now.
Having an IDEA about something is the true “starting point” of all achievement but again, without the DESIRE to act on it and move ahead — NOTHING ELSE WILL EVER HAPPENS!
Doctor “j”
I absolutely agree that nothing happens without first an intense burning desire. To sustain that desire however, you need to surround yourself with the right people. Also, that desire has to come from somewhere and usually it's who you choose to surround yourself with who will influence your desire.
You can be in a gang and have an intense desire to kill someone but meet a mentor who influences you to change the desire into leaving the gang and turning your life around for example. Desire is definitely an important factor to success though, I won't argue about that. 🙂
Thanks Kevin, really enjoy reading your post, I've read it twice and have to say I 100% agree with you. In fact I rarely see such an opinion between people, however it's true that we are part of a bigger society and our best friends and “peer group” are our main channels of communication.
Thanks for the comment Eddie. Being able to filter that main channel of communication is highly important, although, the filtering process can be difficult.
Yes, who we spend time with will form and contribute to our character. They can lead us toward a better or worse person.
I believe having a strong spiritual life comes first. That will give you the love for yourself, desire to succeed, and action to associate with the right people, places and things,
Having a spiritual life can be very powerful indeed. However, that still depends on the people you choose to surround yourself with. You can be “spiritual” and be taught that money is the root of all evil for example which can cause you to limit yourself in life. You can love yourself, have a desire to succeed, and even take action but if the base of all of those things are limited to your spiritual beliefs, you will only allow yourself to go so far. Just my opinion of course, thanks for commenting.
Hi kevin, I really appreciate YOU for this amazing article.
Thanks Jrbayang 🙂
I remember you mentioned that sometimes we need to do the right thing like meet the right people and other books have mentioned how much our peer group influences us. You said that we need to get ourselves and our closest friends at a higher standard of life or get new friends. I can agree that peer pressure influences us to eat certain foods or attend certain events or wear certain brands.
However, while social media makes it easier to connect with others in different parts of the country or world, getting those persons to be in our own community is a challenge. On the other hand, changing our friends so that they live a better life is even a greater challenge. How do we associate ourselves with people already living the life we want? For e.g. we might be their followers on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and so we learn a lot from them but how do we become real friends with them? Or even better how do we find that peer group in our own community?
I don’t know what the best way to find the peer group we want is but one way is to start living at a higher standard. Since our peer group consists of people who are like us, by doing this, you’ll start to naturally attract people into your life who live by the same standards.
For example, if you start getting into fitness, you’ll likely spend more time at places fit people spend time at (gym, hiking trails, running events, whole foods stores, etc.).
In other words, become who you want to be and you’ll attract people who are like you. This is basically why we have the peer group we have in the first place (shared interests, similar standards, etc.).
Again, this isn’t the only way but I think it’s a good place to start.