A lot of things begin to fall in place once you decide to take control of your life. You become acutely aware of the fact that no one else but you will be responsible for where you will be five years from now. You begin to think about your future and begin to design it. You will realize that there will be two types of people you will come across in your life: one that will discourage you and tell you that nothing good can come out of your plans or your efforts and the others who will encourage you and say that nothing is impossible if you set your heart to it and are willing to pay the price. Which of the two categories of people would you like to spend your time with? Obviously, the latter.

It is important that you pick your friends carefully. Have you ever noticed that you tend to become like your friends? Their attitude, their mannerisms and behavior rubs on to you and slowly you loose your own unique personality and you become like the rest of them. Some old couples even begin to look alike. Not only do birds of a feather flock together birds that flock together slowly acquire the same feather. Like an eagle brought up in a chicken coop that never learns to soar high in the skies and acquires instead all the pedestrian traits of its co inhabitants; you will never live up to your potential if you do not surround yourself with people with positive attitude. You can’t choose your parents and you cannot do anything about the circumstances you were born into but you can certainly choose the friends you will spend time with and the kind of life you will lead.

If you will spend most of your time with people whose attitude sucks you will acquire the same attitude. A person with a negative attitude loses out many opportunities that will come his way because a negative person’s mind is closed to opportunities. A successful person is the one who got a chance and took it. It is up to you to decide which people will influence your thinking and then take positive steps to seek their company. After all where you will be after five or ten years depends on the books you read and the company you keep.
Whenever you embark upon a project or an adventure you want to be told you can do it. Such words of encouragement are vital and they will only come from people who have a ppositive attitude and are no threatened by your success. Such people will egg you on and on days,you are feeling low will listen to you and will inspire you with stories about other people who went through similar circumstances and finally succeeded because they never gave up. Negative people, on the other hand, will tell you how they themselves tried something similar and they failed and that you should give up as you don’t have any chances to succeed. Who would you rather listen to?

I am in no way advocating that you should not be realistic in analyzing your chances of success. You cannot be foolhardy and pursue an unrealistic goal. For example I will be absolutely foolish to set my self a goal of beating Usain Bolt or Asafa Powell in a hundred meter dash. So much for ‘whatever the human mind can conceive and believe it can accomplish’. One needs to be guided by the serenity prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Yet your friends have a very powerful influence which at best of times the most independent amongst us cannot ignore. You need to be very careful about the friends you choose and the company you keep. Surround yourself with positive people; chances are you will always get positive results in whatever you do.