This kid, we’ll call him mark, his friends changed because they were in the environment he was put into at school. One was his roomate, and his roomates best friend from highschool. Once he started hanging out with them, their negative atmosphere attracted more and more negative situations.

Lauri, I agree with what you are saying 100%, but in this situation it definately was his environment that changed his mind, and not vice versa. I mention in the post that it is an enormous challenge to change your environment because it takes a change of mind to do so, that is when you are going from negative to possitive. It is much easier though, to go from possitive to negative if you are not on your guard. Let me illustrate.

You’re standing on a stool, 3 1/2 feet off the ground. Around you are your friends, your tv set, the radio shows, and your drug problem. Would it be easier for you to pull all your friends and all up to your level? or do you think they would much more easily bring you down? just a thought!

You’re right in the sense that if the kid would have a different mindset he wouldn’t have started hanging out with bad company in the first place. Namely if he would have been stronger in his own convictions.

But the fact is that not many of us are.

If you think about the situation. This kid is far from home, far from his old, safe circles that protected him previously. He doesn’t know anyone, so he’s happy that some people start hanging out with him.

At first he might not realize what it’ll get him into. But when he does, he’s already attached to these people in some sort and they have already started to affect the way he thinks…

“Like attracts like”

At some level yes. It’s easier to be with smart and successful people if you feel that you are smart and successful.

But what if you really aren’t smart and successful, but want to become one?

I say the easiest way is to start hanging out with smart people and learn from them. Get them to share their learnings and understanding with you.

If you really aren’t smart (yet), thinking that you are smart won’t get you anywhere. In fact it might keep you from learning anything.

So while I now understand and agree on some of your points I still wouldn’t sign your last sentence. I mean, it’s good to think positively about yourself, but if there are things that aren’t good in you, I think it’s much better to change them first and only then start to think positively about those aspects of you.

Otherwise you’re just cheating yourself.

Why is the kid in “bad company” at the first place? Why did he choose to change his friends?

There must have been a reason, and I think the reason was in his own mind. Maybe something happened and he started to think that he is not good enough to get good grades and that there is no point in studying. Not until the shift in his mindset about himself did he start to hang around with these new friends.

So when we are looking the situation again with this background in mind, we can see the point (or at least I do).

If you think the kid’s situation for yourself with your actual mindset, you can’t see yourself hanging around some guys using drugs etc. You don’t have any reason to do it. It’s easy to you to change friends. There’s a little effort, or no effort at all for you to do it, like you said yourself. You would pick the first one, “because it’s just so much easier.” – for you! You already have the right mindset for not hanging with bad company. (bad from your perspective)

But for the kid it’s different. He don’t propably see his company so bad at all.. they are all like him, not good at school and they don’t care too much about boring stuff like studying and careers etc.. He sees some downsides in his new life, but why change it, cause “there’s no point in life anyway”… he could be thinking something like that.. That’s his mindset in his situation.

You can see that with his mindset, it would be quite hard to change company.

In his situation, changing his environment would be much more easier, if he first changed his mindset. If he would start to think “I’m good at school. There’s a point in life. I want to study and have good grades.”, what would happen? With those kind of thoughts it would then be easy to change company. His environment would change with no extra effort.

Like attracts like. If you think you are not good at school, you attract people who are not good at school. If you think you are smart and successful, you attract smart successful people.

Easiest way to change your life, is to start think differently about yourself.

I agree that if the kid that Graham uses as the example in this post would have been stronger in his convictions he wouldn’t have started hanging out in the wrong company but instead would have stayed true to his values.

However, I don’t quite understand what you mean by changing your environment with “just a little effort or no effort at all” by just changing your mind set.

Let’s take a look at the example again:

1. There’s this kid getting good grades and being a “good kid”.
2. He gets to bad company where his new friends are doing drugs and not studying at all.

Now there are two options:
a) He gets new friends with better standards (as Graham suggests) or
b) he stays with these guys and just changes the way he’s thinking and thus changes his friends as well (as you suggest).

If I would be given those two choices I would definitely pick the first one.

Why?

Because it’s just so much easier.

If you stick around with people who are doing all kinds of bad things and just try to be different than them, you have to be really tough. It’s so much easier to let the peer pressure take over and just go with the crowd.

Then again if you choose your crowd well, you don’t have to fight for your beliefs (at least not that often) but your friends can actually support you in staying true to yourself.

Maybe I didn’t understand some key point in your argument, but at least for now I can’t agree with you, Lauri…

So instead of what Graham said I’d say there happened something in the mind of that preppy high school kid before the environment changed. It was actually the change of his mindset, that influenced the environment where he was living.

What I’m saying here is that one shouldn’t use too much energy to change the environment where one is living, but consentrate in developing a new way of thinking and a new mindset. A mindset which resonates with the kind of environment where one would like to be! That way the environment would strart to change with just a little effort or no effort at all!

But still, I think both ways work. While you change your environment your thinking will start to change. When you listen to personal development programs, you begin to have new thoughts, which will eventually change your mindset.

But the key, in my opinion, is your mindset and your thoughts. By focusing in it, you can change your environment. Even if there seemed to be no way to do it, it will start to change accordingly, as soon as your mindset will change. By changing your thoughts on things, your life will change.

Nice info