There’s a saying in real estate that you want to buy the smallest house on the block. Meaning that you want everyone else’s house value to help pull yours artificially upward.
There’s also a saying that you’re the sum of the five people you spend the most time with.
I’ve found that these two things apply to friend groups as well. The smart folks seek out smarter and more interesting friends, happy to be the smallest house in a great neighborhood.
Others naturally gravitate to friend groups in which they are biggest house, which boosts their own ego, but doesn’t help them grow or do interesting things.
You shouldn’t decide whether to be friends with a specific person based on this sort of status judgement, of course. That’s not what friendship is all about.
But I think it’s an interesting way to look at yourself, in relation to the overall aggregate of your friendships. Are you nearly always the small house, or nearly always the big house? Just as an athlete should train against slightly more advanced athletes in order to push themself to become better, perhaps we should surround ourselves with more “successful” friends—however you define that1—to help push ourselves to be better, too.
If you’re not satisfied with what house you’re usually occupying in your in friends groups, perhaps it’s time to put some intentional energy towards moving into a few new neighborhoods.2
- This could be “success” in any manner of things: their temperament, how they respond to adversity, how they utilize their time, how they spend their money, what they prioritize in life, how often they try new things, how generous they are, or any other number of things—many of which are beyond traditional definitions of success (aka, money, power, and social status). ↩︎
- In my mind, you want a mix: you want to be around people who inspire you to be better, while also helping to pay-it-forward by inspiring others, too. ↩︎