Why You Need To Get Rid Of Bad Company

By Nate Steere  AskMen.com

If you’re trying to get ahead and improve yourself, you’ve taken steps to set yourself up for success. You’ve gotten in shape (mentally and physically), you’re working hard on yourself, and you’re reading books and articles with information you need. If you’re trying to make improvements, great work — most people try to get ahead by blaming their problems on their environment, and don’t take any of the blame for why they’re stuck in a rut.

However, there are ways your environment can drag you down — look at the people around you. If the people you’re friends with, or associate with at work, are a negative influence, guess what? You’re being influenced, whether you’re aware of it or not. Now, any of your friends can have a bad patch, and being there to pick them up when they’re down is part of friendship. But we’re talking about that other friend — the one whose idea of fun is always getting wasted, who can never chip in on the bill and always has a crisis they need help cleaning up. You ignore their calls, and the one time you do pick up feels like one too many. If you’re like most guys, you don’t seek out the company of these people, but when they initiate a meet-up, you tend to accommodate. It’s easy to say and hard to do, but here are four compelling reasons you need to cut ties.

They are shaping your attitude

Jim Rohn is a self-help author who famously said: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Your attitude, the way you look at the world, is influenced by who you spend time with. Think about it: Your worldview is shaped by the things you see and experience in the world. The way you invest your time in people and activities shapes the man you become. That’s why it’s so important for guys to travel, to see new things and expand their horizons. On the flip side, if you spend your time in a smoky bar, listening to somebody complain about how their job sucks, their boss sucks, their love life sucks, and there’s never enough money, it’s going to rub off on you. Do you leave these sessions feeling charged and ready to take on the world? No, they juice you up with negative energy and teach you to look at your life like a victim. That’s just a bad attitude — we’ve all had friends who get into too many fights, trouble with the law, drugs, and worse. You grow to fit your environment, so make sure your environment breeds excellence and positivity.

They are derailing you from your goals

Have you ever been driving home from work, with the plan to cook dinner, clean up around the house, throw in a load of laundry, exercise, save a cat that’s stuck in a tree, solve the Middle Eastern situation, read for a while, then work a little more on your plan to go into business for yourself? Then your phone rings with your buddies telling you to meet them at the bar. You tell yourself “I’ll do all that stuff tomorrow…,” and the next thing you recall is your alarm waking you up in the morning. Listen, plans change, and one of the best parts of being an adult is that you get to make responsible decisions about your life. You can eat pretty much whatever you want to for dinner. Feel like grabbing a DVD tonight? Go for it. And if the offer to do something fun comes along, by all means, rearrange your schedule and have a good time.

Here’s the hitch. When people constantly pull you away from those other areas of your life, it can cause you to become unbalanced. If you’re not achieving your personal goals, you need to balance it out — and your friends should be supportive of that. If taking a pass for the night causes them to tease you, or worse, make fun of your other goals, take a look at that. Granted, good friends bust balls left and right, but they truly want to see you succeed. Toxic friends, on the other hand, are afraid of seeing you succeed, as a reminder how they’re not succeeding in their own lives. If your friends aren’t respectful of your dreams and ambitions, they won’t respect the time you devote to those pursuits, and they’ll try and get you to come to the bar instead.

They’re costing you money

Have another look at the Jim Rohn quote in the first tip. This is outstanding advice in all aspects of friendship, but it’s especially true when it comes to the area of personal finance. Another speaker, Randy Gage, adapted this quote to read, “You earn the average of the salaries of the five people you spend the most time with.” More excellent advice! You’re reading this article, so you’re the kind of person who recognizes wisdom when he sees it. Then again, go ahead and prove Gage right: Grab a piece of paper, list the names of the five people you spend the most time with (a total of five from your work and personal life, typically), write down their approximate salaries (it’s always less than they lead you to believe), add ’em up, and divide by five. This will probably be very close to what you earn. So, what’s the lesson? If you want more money, hang out with rich people? Not at all. Success in business is related to drive, hard work, persistence, and a hundred other qualities. High earners bring value to their companies and are rewarded for it. Their outer reality reflects their inner reality. Thus, hang out around people who give value to their companies. They’re much more likely to give value to their friends as well.

You’re hurting them

OK, so if none of the above arguments have influenced you at all, what about this one? By being accepting of the company of toxic people, you’re not just hurting yourself, you’re hurting them. Ouch! But it’s true; by being available to hang out and hear all of your friends’ problems, you are allowing them to continue in their negativity. If they have a sympathetic ear and a cold beer on hand to deal with their sorrow, they’re going to continue using negativity as a path through life. Problems are meant to challenge us, to make us grow by rising to the occasion. It’s not always easy, but the true path around a problem is through it: stepping up, manning up and solving what needs to be solved. By always being sympathetic when your friends complain, you’re allowing them to be beat by the problems in their lives. That’s right: Now you’re the one being a bad friend.

Being a good man

Hopefully, these points have convinced you to stop spending time and energy on the toxic people in your life. But, also don’t get confused about the point here. Everyone has ups and downs, and the time will come where your true friends need somebody to listen, a shoulder to cry on or even some real help. None of that makes your friend a negative person. You can tell the difference between somebody having a bad day, bad month or even a bad year, versus a person who is in the dumps because they are choosing to be. So don’t abandon your friends — friendship is one of the very best parts of life. And don’t tolerate the people who use you as a crutch — you’ll end up smelling like an armpit.