We Are the Sum of the People Around Us

The scientists James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis ran a study on how one person’s lifestyle and habits ripple out to their friends, colleagues and family. They tracked social networks over many years and published their findings in 2007.

It turned out that when one person takes up sport, the odds that a friend of theirs also starts go up by 30%. And the same works the other way: if a person smokes, the odds that a friend picks up smoking too rise sharply as well.

There’s an example of what friendship actually is that stuck with me — from a talk by Vladimir Dovgan, a Russian entrepreneur, years ago. If the main thing we do with the people we call “friends” is drink together, then a more accurate word for them is drinking buddies. What else holds us together? A friend is the person with whom we agreed to, say, go for a morning run — and then we woke up at dawn, and outside it’s cold and pouring rain. But to keep our word, we pushed through, got ourselves together, and went out. We ran together in foul weather, lived through the great experience of getting through something side by side, and came out better, healthier, stronger. That — that is the friendship that moves us forward.

Recently someone asked me what advice I’d give myself twenty years ago. One of the most important: don’t be afraid to change the people around you, to be with those who stretch the edges of how you think and what you’re capable of.

Here’s to worthy people in our circle! 😎