Changing Your Friend Group Is The Key To Finally Unlocking Your Dream Life

Rylee Snow
Jun 29, 2024
4 min read

Updated: Jul 28, 2024

Women on a bench in the city with different personalities

Just like a flower, you can only grow as big as the garden you’re planted in. The people we surround ourselves with have a significant impact on our ability to grow. Your friends are either supporting your growth or they are holding you back like weeds.

The people we spend time with influence our thoughts, behaviors, beliefs, and personalities. They even influence changes in the neural pathways of our brain. The friends you have in the present will affect who you become in the future. This is why changing your friend group is the key to finally unlocking your dream life.

Think about the people you spend the most time with. These could be your family members, roommates, friends, coworkers, or even para-social relationships such as content creators. Do these people align with your values and goals? Do you want to become more like these people? If not, you have some changes to make.

The Science Of Friendship

You’ve probably heard the saying “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”. There is a reason this saying is so popular and it is supported by neuroscience. Our brains literally synchronize with the people we send the most time with through a process called neural synchronization. This is why the people we spend the most time with are so influential in who we become. Humans are social creatures who crave and thrive in connection with each other. However, it is important to be selective with who we are connecting with. Because as we are making social connections our brains are making new connections as well. Our social connections have a direct influence on our thoughts, behaviors, beliefs, and personalities.

Influence

Spending time with people who are not in alignment with your values will negatively impact your ability to grow into a better version of yourself.

It is very hard to change your habits without changing your environment. You need to surround yourself with people who support the changes you are making. Changing your environment and surrounding yourself with positive influences will help your brain rewire and swap those old habits for new ones.

If you want to reinvent yourself and change your life, you need to take space away from people who are still holding onto “the old you”. It will be very hard to swap the late nights drinking for early morning green juice runs if you’re still hanging out with the girl who tries to pressure you into partying with her at the club every weekend. If the people around you always have something negative to say every time you talk about your goals it will be hard to feel positive.

Surrounding yourself with positive influences will help you grow. However, surrounding yourself with negative influences will drag you down.

You owe it to your future self to choose wisely who you spend your time with today because it WILL impact your tomorrow.

Outgrowing Old Friends

In life, there are people you will grow with and people you will grow apart from.

Trying to hold onto relationships that are no longer in energetic alignment will only create negativity. We magnetize people to us that are in alignment with our energy and we repel those who are not. If you are no longer in energetic alignment with your old friends you will repel each other. Because of this, trying to remain in a friendship or relationship that is no longer in alignment with the person you are becoming will have a negative affect on both of you. Trying to force a relationship to work when it is past it’s time will not serve either of you.

Letting Go

If you find yourself outgrowing old friends, you don’t have to cut them off or end the relationship entirely. Although, sometimes that’s what’s needed.

Life is seasonal. This season may require that the two of you take space apart. It is not always necessary to cut people out of your life forever. It’s important to find a healthy balance between your bond and your boundaries.

You can love other people while still protecting your energy from them. You can still love and care for the people in your life that you have out grown. Letting go of relationships is not wrong, it is healthy. Just as creation and dissolution is the natural cycle of life, so it is in relationships as well.

Try to find ways to create more space between you and the people who are not supporting your growth. You both need space to grow independently. Maybe one day you will grow back together. Maybe you will grow further apart. Regardless of the future, you both need to gift each other with the space to grow.

Truly loving another person requires giving them the space they need to thrive on their own unique growth journey.

New Connections

Surround yourself with new friends and people who inspire you.

Instead of hanging out with that old friend from high school who still wants to go out to the bar every night and drink all weekend, hang out with that new girl you met at Pilates who wants to get green juice and walk the farmer’s market with you. Ditch the gossip and small talk with low vibe people and seek out deep inspiring conversations about new ideas with people you admire. Instead of sitting around complaining about your 9-5 job again with your coworkers find people who are actually taking steps to go after a fulfilling career and to create financial abundance in their life.

Go to new places, meet new people, and create new experiences for yourself. Find people who believe in you and who encourage you to believe in yourself.

Find people who dream big and dream big with them.