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I had to read it twice.
“You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.”
Same words. Two completely different meanings. And the second one holds more leadership truth than most advice I’ve heard all year.
Here’s what’s underneath it: Your brain is shaped by the signals it takes in every day, what you see, what you hear, what you experience.
Which means your environment, and the people in it, quietly shape how you think.
Most leaders treat this as background noise. It isn’t. Curating who shapes your thinking is a leadership skill, one of the quietest and most overlooked ones there is.
You can’t change another person’s words or actions.
You can choose who you spend your thinking time with.
And that choice shapes more than your mood.
“Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.”
The people around you influence:
- how far you stretch your thinking
- how much courage you show
- how far you believe you can go
I’ll be honest, being intentional about this is a skill I had to build.
The urge to fix or shift someone else is real. But the energy spent there is energy taken from the only thing you actually control: your own choices.
So if you’re wondering whether your environment is growing you or shrinking you, start here:
- Notice how you feel after time with certain people.
- Pay attention to whose voices amplify your thinking — and whose quiet it.
- Choose more of the ones who energize you.
Find your people.
Because when your environment changes, your mind changes too.
And so does what you believe is possible.
“Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.”
Oprah Winfrey
American talk show host, television producer, and author
