Are Your Friend’s Making You Successful?
An Entrepreneurial Essay.
Are you an Encore Entrepreneur, an individual over 50 who is looking at retirement as a time to explore new opportunities and create a small business?
Whether your business is selling colorful hard-to-find products, sharing your vast life experience through authoring a transformational book or creating a vibrant coaching and consulting business, who you surround yourself with can be a vital facet of your business success as well as your physical wellbeing as you age.
What is your story? How are you expressing yourself in-person as you speak to one individual, a large group, or online in the social media arena? Whose opinions do you value? Who are your friends?
Anais Nin said, “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
What new worlds are you giving birth to as you age?
Look at the people you surround yourself with — are they active? Healthy? Creative? Are they busy living life as they age? We’re all influenced by those who surround us and are more likely to keep up bad habits if encouraged to do so by our loved ones. Surrounding yourself with people who have aspirations similar to your own can help you create a more sustainable life and business.
I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “birds of a feather flock together,” but did you know it applies to weight gain and chronic diseases as well?
In a study on the value of social support researchers found, most overweight women “never” or “rarely” experienced support from friends or family in their weight loss goals. “Women who “never” experienced family support were least likely to lose weight (45.7% lost weight) whereas women who experienced both frequent friend and family support were more likely to lose weight (71.6% lost weight), according to Kiernan, M., S. D. Moore, et al. (2012). “Social support for healthy behaviors: scale psychometrics and prediction of weight loss among women in a behavioral program.” Obesity (Silver Spring) 20(4): 756–764.
Another study demonstrated that “individuals who are socially isolated or have few positive social connections seem to age at a faster rate and have more chronic diseases.” In this study researchers looked at a hormone, Oxytocin, which seems to be influenced by positive social interactions, friendly contact, and buffers the effects of stress while promoting physical resilience, according to Kubzansky, L. D., W. B. Mendes, et al. (2009). “Protocol for an experimental investigation of the roles of oxytocin and social support in neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, and subjective responses to stress across age and gender.” BMC Public Health 9: 481.
In other words the more positive social interactions you have the better the balance of oxytocin in your system, which decrease the harmful effects of stress and increasing heart health and other physical signs of vibrancy.
Whatever your goals are for the next sixty years, it is worth looking at the similarity of your goals and the aspirations of your family and friends.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on October 6, 2014.
