By Dina Aldabbagh

We don’t realize just how much the people we spend time with affect us. Then suddenly one day words are coming out of your mouth and they sound just like your friend. Suddenly your delivery is indistinguishable from theirs. Suddenly you’re calming yourself down and you know exactly what they’d say to help you.

I have a great friend who I don’t get to see often now because we live in different cities, but I’ve noticed numerous moments in which I am self-regulating mid-situation and suddenly…I hear her voice as the one that’s calming me down. I know exactly what she’d say and how she’d say it and the energy she’d carry in her demeanour. Obviously the words are coming from me, so then why do they sound so much like hers? Because she lives in my nervous system.

We spent so much time together when we lived in the same city, talked about so many different topics, lived through so many different experiences together, and I experienced her response to life through those situations — a response I loved. She is the most generous, lighthearted, accepting, and forgiving person you’d meet. She is slow to judge and quick to understand. She doesn’t take things personally, but in every situation looks to give grace. She is sensitive to people’s emotions yet doesn’t feel burdened by even the most extreme responses. And she doesn’t even realize that who she is as a person so elite — and someone I’m eternally grateful to have as a friend. 

While I’m luckily surrounded by great people, life is life and you’re constantly coming into contact with all different archetypes — so I don’t always get to be in the company of a person as positive and high-spirited as her. In moments where I feel urged to get down, I’ve noticed that I think about how she would respond — and my nervous system is eased. Without her being anywhere near the current situations I live through, her spirit lives utterly within me. Suddenly I get transported back to the ease and lightness that I lived through alongside her. 

This speaks to the indomitable effect of the people who touch our lives, and who we choose to share our time — and therefore our lives — with. You’ve certainly heard the phrase, “You are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with,” and “spend” is used here presently. That’s true, the present is more impactful than the past, but I’m asking you to understand the implications of what you do in the present and that who you are today is not just a sum of who you are with today, but who you have spent the majority of your time with. Therefore who you are in the future will be inescapably impacted by who you spend time with today.  

Look at what I’m telling you about myself: this friend, who no longer lives near me and whose life is now in a very different shape than when I saw her regularly, is still fueling my inner dialogue. We spent so much time together — we don’t now. And yet…she is the voice I hear in certain situations. Her positivity impacts me when I am surrounded by negativity. Her lightheartedness redirects me when I am motivated to worry. A part of me is now so greatly influenced by a person who I used to spend a lot of time with, yet is no longer 20 minutes away. 

In a way, she’s as present with me now as she was then. The difference is that before she lived near me, and now she lives in me. This is the effect that people have on our lives. Sometimes our intersections with others are very short lived, and yet some aspects of who they are that moved us deeply just utterly catalyze us and leave us a different shade than when we first met them. Imagine now with the people who we spend copious amounts of time with. 

The consideration, then, is to ask yourself: “Do I want to be more like this person?” This doesn’t mean rejecting every person who isn’t exactly everything you personally want to be, but is there something about them that you can admire? No one can be the perfect example for you — you are an unique individual — but understand that everyone you spend lots of time with will add into who you are. So it’s important to ask yourself if you can find something in that person that you actually admire and want to mirror.

Because you will mirror it, whether you care to or not. When you spend so much time with any source of input, you will be affected by it. If you listen to EDM or country music, your personality will eventually be a reflection of that, even if just very subtly. But you cannot escape being affected by the inputs of your life. 

You may hate the way your dad complains… but then you find yourself complaining. You may hate the way your best friend gossips…but then you find yourself gossipping. You will be a sum of who you choose to spend your time with today. And the evidence? Look at all of the qualities in yourself that you carry from the people of your past. 

It’s a great thing to want to connect with everybody and find an opportunity to love everyone you come by, but wisdom is knowing who to let come close and who to hold very lightly in your life. The people who you let closest to you — the ones who you tell about your problems and your dreams, who you go out and consistently experience life with — eventually they will become a reference point within yourself for how you understand the world. Their responses to life impact your own inner voice. 

I was going to title this blog “A Good Friend Lives Within You,” because my reference point is a good friend — but I realized that wouldn’t be as truthful as I want to be, because a bad friend lives within you too. A negative person, a judgemental person, someone who is offended and angered by everything, someone who believes cynical things about the world, themselves, and others…they will also demand a place to reside within you as well. 

This is why choosing your friends is important. It’s not just about the sort of more commercialized understanding most have of this concept in that “if you want to be a millionaire hang out with millionaires,” but rather that the way these people experience, approach, and understand life will fester itself into your own approach. No human being is so invincible to be completely unaffected by their constant input. If it’s put in, it will show outwardly as well. 

If you pay attention, you’ll notice that most of your current inner dialogue — unless you’ve intentionally changed it — is that of your parents’ way of speaking and their beliefs of the world that you were constantly exposed to as a child. If not parents, then whoever was your primary caretaker. The point is: no role is magical, the impact comes from how much time you spend with them. This same principle is true for your entire life. Whoever who choose to be the people that you spend holidays with, that you celebrate events with, that you take most of your trips with, that you build a life with…they will eventually become just another variation of you, because you would have impacted each other so greatly by all the time you spent together that there is so much common ground in how you guys “do” life. 

You have to choose the right people to be your closest points of contact with the world; they will soon be the gate in which you enter the world through. Their lens is the filter over your own perspective.