Your environment has a lot of influence on how you think and what you do. Wrong friends can therefore cause you to make just the wrong choices. I can know, but I can also know that you yourself can do a lot to change your environment. A while back, I had one of those moments where I realized how far I had come.
Therefore, in this blog, I want to focus more on the power of your environment and the influence of your friends.
In fact, I had gone out to dinner with friends in a setting that I had had before. A nice dinner, only my group of friends had totally changed compared to before. Now I was sitting there with people who are experts in their field, and I can now call myself an expert in my field (even if I say so myself 😉 ).
Those other friends came because I changed, too. I once made a very conscious decision to change my life and with that my environment changed as well. This didn't happen very quickly or without a struggle. But it is inevitable.
It will be the same when you change.
And this can be painful at times, but it is necessary.
You can also say, I'm going to change my environment first and that will help me change myself. Often that is the quickest way to change something. Want to achieve something? Look for people who have already achieved it and interact with them. One of the best formulas for success there is.
Influence of friends
Friends influence young people's opinions, behavior and development.
This can actually go two ways. Friends help you develop your social skills and become more resilient to stress. These friendships help you build your self-confidence and become more understanding of other people.
The other side is that friends can actually cause you to become unsocial and even engage in criminal behavior. On this side, scientists believe that this can begin, for example, because you are at a party, your friends are drinking beer and you are more likely to drink beer. You then adopt your friends' traits instead of developing your own.
Young people also report that good friends help you with your problems[1] and thus they directly influence how you solve problems. Whether you take responsibility for what you need to do, or become the victim and start pointing to other people to solve your problem.
Friends also affect your performance, as I have noticed myself, scientists have also studied this. For this, they divided students into how good they are at something and how good their friends are at something. They had students write a letter on 2 occasions, students who dealt with friends who were already better at this wrote a significantly better text the2nd time. This means that it was really down to their group of friends that their performance improved.
For students who were low achievers at first, friendships with students who were already high achievers helped them gain more satisfaction, self-confidence, social status and a greater sense of being rewarded for good work[2].
Bad friends
Those who ever listen to or watch Jordan Peterson, or read his books, also learn a bit about what bad and good friends are. Bad friends are people who, for example, become jealous of your success and thwart the steps you take; they do not have your best interests at heart.
In the process, bad friends can also take advantage of you. For example, you are always the bob. You just get that piece of space cake that is too big so it doesn't fall nicely. You are basically the joker of your friends' club.
Research also shows that if you do not have a good relationship with your parents, friends are more likely to influence you to do things that are not good for you[3]. After all, you are much more susceptible.
For example, a good friend will never encourage you to binge drink, something that unfortunately can cause some young people to get alcohol poisoning.
Recognizing wrong friends
But sometimes a click is just really good and everything is incredibly enjoyable. So how do you know if you have the wrong friend? Then check these things.
You tell bad news. A bad friend will then tell a story about what was worse about his life or the life of someone he knows. A good friend will listen to you.
You tell good news. A bad friend will then tell you something that has been good for them or someone they know. A good friend will celebrate with you that you have good news (even if they are not doing well).
People with whom things are not going well can start to pull you down, thereby talking up for themselves that they are not doing well[4].
If you are afraid to put this to the test, a hypnosis expert can help you with this. Anyway, if you have a fear of telling good news, that is already a sign. Still, it is good then to check if you are worried for nothing or if you just had the feeling right. Your feeling could be wrong and then it would be a shame if you didn't double check.
A hypnosis expert can help you prepare for this good news or bad news conversation by, for example, visualizing how you tell it and how you give your acquaintance a chance to show up as a friend or as someone who is just not helping you.
Breaking the pattern of wrong friends
As mentioned earlier, a bad relationship with your parents can make you more susceptible to getting friends who don't have your best interests at heart. You are then more likely to do what they want because you want to be accepted. This is because your family is then not an alternative to your social life, or at least it does not feel that way.
Over the course of your life, this may have created a pattern of finding it difficult to set boundaries and fearing rejection. As a result, you may hold onto some friendships longer than is good for you.
Regression can help you break these kinds of patterns of choosing not for yourself, but for wrong friends. In fact, with regression, you go back to the first moment when you accepted a friend when they were not doing right by you. Then while you are under hypnosis you start doing something with that moment to handle it differently from now on. To recognize wrong friends faster and to choose for yourself when a friendship is dragging you down. This can do an awful lot to have the right people around you in the future to help you with your personal goals.
Location to find friends
Then once you get rid of those wrong friends or at least know who you do and don't want around you you can feel like you want to find friends who will actually help you move forward.
So how do you do this?
It depends a bit on the goals you want to achieve. Being an entrepreneur with Hypnosis Institute Netherlands, I went to seminars and that's where I met many of my new friends.
With those new friends I even give a seminar and I give seminars more often anyway also on my own for the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands (really something to go to if learning hypnosis and helping people is your goal 😊) .
Instead, do you have athletic goals? Then you can also meet interesting people in the gym who can help you achieve your athletic goals.
Are you more into cooking? So taking a cooking class can definitely help you meet new people with similar interests.
So check out where you can learn more to achieve your goals and if that allows you to do something where you meet like-minded people.
If you are nervous about even going to such an event, a hypnosis expert can also help you build your confidence and skills to go to such an event on your own.
Want to learn more about hypnosis? Come to the free online master class for an introduction.
Instead, would you like to get started directly with techniques to help yourself and others? Then come to a seminar (yep 😊) or sign up directly for one of our trainings. The trainings are delivered in class or live online. Choose a format that suits you.
Also, pin this infographic as a reminder:
Sources:
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8721.ep11510326?journalCode=cdpa
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780122405402500177
[3] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1005188108461
