About two years ago, I started building a framework for myself around one simple question: Who is really shaping my life? As a Maxwell Leadership Certified Team Member, I have access to a number of leadership and personal growth resources, and one idea that pushed my thinking further came from John Maxwell’s The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. The broader concept is simple: the people closest to us matter. Who we spend time with matters. Who we listen to matters. Who we allow to influence our thinking matters.

The more I sat with that idea, the more I realized I did not want to leave it as just another good thought. I wanted to build something practical around it. So I created what I now call my Mentorship / Friend / Helping Grid. Every quarter, I step back and assess the people in my life. Who am I spending time with? Who is influencing me? Who am I learning from? Who is challenging me? Who am I helping? And who am I keeping close simply because of history?

One question has become especially important: Are the people closest to me aligned with the direction I say I want my life to go? Over the last two years, this has become more than a personal reflection tool. I use it with coaching clients, I use it with people I mentor, and I bring versions of these same questions into conversations with people who are trying to grow, get unstuck, make better decisions, or simply become more intentional about where their life is going.

What I have noticed is that we spend a lot of time evaluating our goals, habits, careers, finances, and future, but we do not always stop to evaluate the people who have the greatest access to our thinking. And that matters. You can have a great goal and still be surrounded by people who consistently talk you out of it. You can have a strong desire to grow and still spend most of your time in relationships that normalize staying exactly where you are. You can want to become more disciplined, financially healthy, professionally capable, emotionally mature, or personally confident, but if the environment around you constantly reinforces the opposite, growth becomes much harder.

That is why I continue to use this framework personally and in my coaching. It creates a different kind of conversation. Not just, “What do you want?” but, “Who are you becoming around?” This year, I became even more intentional. I set a specific goal to spend more time around people who are strong in areas where I want to grow. The more I work with this, the more I believe something very strongly: proximity has influence.

The people closest to us affect what we normalize, what we talk about, what we tolerate, what we pursue, and what we believe is possible. They influence how we think about money, work, health, risk, success, pressure, and the future. Over time, the environment around us begins shaping the person within us. That is why this is not really about networking, social climbing, or surrounding yourself with impressive people. It is about something deeper: Who has access to your thinking, and who is shaping the direction of your life?

We understand environment when it comes to almost everything else. If you want a plant to grow, the soil matters. The water matters. The temperature matters. The sunlight matters. You would never put a plant in poor soil, deprive it of sunlight, and then spend six months blaming the plant because it is not growing.

But we do that to ourselves. We say we want to grow, make more money, build a stronger career, become healthier, become more disciplined, or change our lives. Yet we can spend most of our relational time in environments where none of those things are being pursued. Then eventually we wonder why change feels so difficult.

Maybe the issue is not only discipline. Maybe the environment keeps pulling us back toward our old normal. Every circle has a normal: a normal level of ambition, a normal tolerance for excuses, a normal attitude toward money, work, health, opportunity, learning, courage, and failure. Stay inside an environment long enough, and its normal can start becoming your normal. You do not have to consciously agree with everything around you for it to influence you. You just have to be around it long enough.

Environment does more than influence behavior. It can influence what we believe is possible. Sometimes we are not limited because we lack ability. Sometimes our frame of reference is simply too small.

Maybe we have never seen someone manage money differently. Maybe we have never watched someone build a business, reinvent a career, pursue personal growth seriously, or openly talk about goals, strategy, discipline, and long-term thinking. Then suddenly we get around someone who does, and something changes. Not because they gave us a five-step plan or fixed our life, but because they expanded what we believed was possible.

Sometimes proximity gives us permission to think differently. The right person can expand our imagination. The wrong environment can quietly shrink it.

If proximity matters, then we have to ask who actually has access to us. I do not mean every coworker, relative, acquaintance, or social media connection. I mean the people you call, text, vent to, tell your dreams to, and listen to when you are uncertain. The people whose opinions matter. The people who can talk you into something or talk you out of something.

Ask yourself: Where are they going? Because that may tell you something about where you are going. And maybe the harder question is: What does being around them make me believe is normal? That question can be uncomfortable, but it is worth asking.

One of the clearest places this shows up is money. Imagine one circle where debt is normal, saving feels impossible, investing is seen as something only rich people do, making more money is viewed suspiciously, and everyone assumes work is something you simply endure.

Now imagine another circle where people talk openly about investing, ownership, business, skill development, promotions, opportunities, and the future. Those two groups may live in the same city, earn similar incomes, and come from similar backgrounds, but they are living inside completely different mental economies.

Your circle does not automatically determine your income, but it can influence the decisions, habits, expectations, and opportunities that affect your income over time. It can shape what risks you understand, what skills you value, what opportunities you notice, and what you believe is possible.

And money is only one example. Your closest relationships also shape your thought life. Pay attention to the dominant conversations in your circle. Are they about possibilities or problems? Solutions or complaints? Growth or gossip? Responsibility or blame? Action or excuses?

There is a major difference between having friends who listen to your frustration and having friends who help you stay frustrated. Healthy relationships do not ignore pain or force positivity, but eventually they ask, “What are you going to do about it?” Some people will help you through a difficult season. Others will help you build a permanent residence there. Know the difference.

Over time, conversations begin shaping standards. Spend enough time around disciplined people and discipline starts looking normal. Spend enough time around people who read and learning starts looking normal. Spend enough time around people who take care of their health, save, invest, and take ownership of their lives, and those behaviors begin to feel more normal too.

The opposite is also true. Complaining, blame, cynicism, chaos, low standards, and stagnation can all become normalized. That is why I believe we have to be intentional about who has close access to us. Not because we are better than anyone, but because we are all more influenceable than we like to admit.

I also want to be clear about something: my own top five is not perfect. I am still working on it. I am still assessing it and refining it. This is not a framework I built two years ago, completed, and checked off the list. It is something I continually return to.

Every quarter, I ask who is in my life, who I am spending time with, who has become more or less influential, where I need more exposure, who I need to move toward, and where I may need more distance. I also ask where I may simply be settling because a relationship is familiar.

I have made major changes in my relational world over the last year. Some were intentional. Some happened naturally. Some were uncomfortable. And I do not believe I am finished. In fact, I hope I never am. My goals are changing. My responsibilities are changing. The areas where I want to grow are changing. So it makes sense that my relational environment will evolve too.

That does not make relationships disposable. It means I want to remain intentional. This is not about creating the perfect five. I am not even sure there is such a thing. It is about continually asking two questions: Are the relationships closest to me supporting the person I am trying to become? And am I becoming the kind of person who adds value to the people closest to me?

There is another important part of the framework. When I think about my top five, I do not just make a list of five names. I look at the role those relationships are playing in my life.

I think about them in three segments: Who is mentoring me? Who is riding alongside me? Who am I mentoring? I believe a healthy relational life needs all three.

The people ahead of me stretch my thinking, expose me to new possibilities, and help me see farther. The people beside me challenge, encourage, and grow with me through the same season of life. The people I mentor give me an opportunity to reach back and help someone else move forward.

But these roles can change. Someone who once mentored you may eventually become more of a peer. Someone who rode alongside you for years may move into a different season. Someone you once helped may eventually outgrow your ability to help them. Relationships have seasons. The goal is not to freeze people into permanent categories. The goal is to stay aware of the role each relationship is actually playing now.

This may be one of the most important parts of the whole conversation. Everybody wants better friends, successful friends, encouraging friends, and people who make them better. But there is another question we have to ask: Would the person you want in your circle want you in theirs?

Instead of only asking, “Who do I need around me?” ask, “Who am I becoming for the people around me?” Am I bringing ideas, encouragement, accountability, and wisdom? Am I dependable? Am I growing? Do I celebrate other people’s success? Can people trust me? Do I challenge people without belittling them? Do I bring energy into the room, or drain it?

You attract stronger relationships partly by becoming stronger relationally yourself. And if you are mentoring someone, that becomes even more important, because now your life is not only influencing you. It is influencing them too.

So make this practical. Write down five names. Do not overthink it. Who are the five people who currently have the greatest relational influence on your life?

Then ask: Who is mentoring me? Who is riding alongside me? Who am I mentoring? What does each relationship bring out of me? What behavior does it normalize? What conversations dominate our time together? Does this person challenge me? Do they encourage growth? Do I admire the direction of their life? What am I learning from them, and what am I contributing to them?

Then go one level deeper. Who do I want in? Who do I need to move away from? Who do I need to move toward? And if you are mentoring someone, ask whether that person genuinely wants to grow, whether they are teachable, whether they are taking ownership, and whether you are helping them move forward or trying to carry them.

Then ask what may be the hardest question of all: If I continue becoming more like the environment created by these relationships, am I comfortable with where I will be five years from now?

Do not rush past that. Sit with it. Because if the answer is no, something probably has to change.

Sometimes we are desperately trying to change our lives while remaining completely committed to the environment that helped produce our current life. That is difficult to sustain.

If you do not like your current level of living, thinking, income, career trajectory, or progress, do not only ask, “What do I need to do differently?” Ask, “Who am I becoming?” Then ask: Who is ahead of me? Who is beside me? Who am I reaching back to help?

Your future is not only shaped by the decisions you make. It is also shaped by the conversations you repeatedly have, the standards you repeatedly see, the attitudes you repeatedly hear, the behaviors you repeatedly normalize, and the people you repeatedly walk beside.

Choose your five carefully. Evaluate them intentionally. Refine them continually. Move toward people who stretch you. Create distance where wisdom requires it. Walk closely with people who are building alongside you. Reach back and help somebody behind you.

Do not confuse helping with carrying. Do not confuse caring with rescuing. Do not confuse history with alignment. And do not believe you can want growth for someone more than they want it for themselves.

Keep asking yourself the question underneath this entire conversation:

Does my relational environment support the person I am trying to become?

Because if the answer is no, changing your life may eventually require changing your proximity.

And just as importantly:

Become somebody worth having in someone else’s five.