It’s famously been said that every individual is the average of the five people he interacts with most.
Life experience certainly bears out the validity of this truism.
A teenager falls into a friend group that practically undoes the influence of a previous decade and a half of parenting. A soldier goes into a deployment with one set of habits, and comes home with another. A man was never much for exercise, until he started dating a woman who is.
– https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/relationships/sunday-firesides-relationships-over-willpower/
The world of self-help is relentlessly focused on discipline, but the amount of discipline life requires is directly proportional to the quality of one’s family and friends. A spouse who ever encourages your excellence, a friend who consistently elevates your vision, a community which routinely realigns your compass, is worth more than all the resolution-making and teeth-gritting you can muster. When it comes to becoming who you want to be, relationships > willpower.
– https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/relationships/sunday-firesides-relationships-over-willpower/