Story: Real-Life Impact of Surrounding Oneself with Positive Influences
The wise understood, that familiarity creates a bond between the woodpecker and its cousin, the pigeon. A significant portion of our thinking, behavior, and ultimately our fate, depends on our relationships with others. Positive associations inspire and lift like beautiful flowers. And when one is negative, they tend to corrupt the value and growth of a person.
Positive influences prove motivating for us. When we surround ourselves with people with a positive outlook toward life, it can create a significant impact on leading our lives better. Hence, it boosts self-confidence, and mood and enhances resilience. This helps achieve goals and aspirations and creates an optimistic outlook. Fables present good illustrations of that. Take, for example, the fable “Fox and the Grapes”: The fox cannot reach the delicious grapes; so, he puts them under a touch of contempt, thus saving himself from feeling deprived. This fable shows, however, an easy habit to adopt – being negative by way of envy, jealousy, and false belief. To such kinds of people who feed on this ill, associating ourselves with them gives us a chance of becoming victims of this sickness and deceit.
The “Ant and the Grasshopper” is a fable that shows how important it is to associate with the industrious and prudent. While the grasshopper enjoys the free pleasures of summer, the ant works hard preparing for winter. The grasshopper faces troubles in wintertime, but the ant, knowing it’s a winter safety due to its wise association with the other hardworking ants, is safe. This fable can generally be summarized to emphasize the need to learn from and imitate those known for their good attributes, like diligence, prudence, and responsibility.
The wise association is not just avoiding but seeking and finding strength in relationships with persons who inspire and uplift us in life. Mentors, friends, family, and people who we read about in books watch in films, or even hear about in history can guide us to be better, critique us constructively, and make us strive for excellence in all areas of our lives. Moreover, the people we surround ourselves with can help impact our confidence level.
To lead a more positive and fulfilling life, it is essential to choose positive people who can create a profound experience. While positive influence surrounds us, it builds an environment of encouragement and support for us. Strong support is created by positive people. They can help you navigate difficult times more effectively. Much of our character and with it, our ability to achieve much depends on the type of company we keep. Therefore, it is from such a frosty association that we can create virtuous circles nurturing both individual and collective growth. Just like a flock of geese flying in formation can help achieve greater heights than any single bird, our journey can also be enriched collectively with the positive influence of those with whom we have chosen to fly.