Are You Shaping or Being Shaped by the Rooms You're In?

As you read this, I'm either halfway to Nashville or already there.

I'm flying in for a Coterie dinner with the most amazing women coming in from Florida, Arizona, Oregon (hi, it's me), California, all over the place. This is one of those rooms I've invested in being part of, even if it means flying all over the country to be with these women.

I do all of this intentionally and intuitively.

I get myself into rooms where people are living their lives in ways that expand me so I can learn from them and offer who I am to them.

You know that saying that you become the sum of the people you spend the most time with? If it's true (and I do believe it is), then I want to be surrounded by people who are building really intentional lives and meaningful businesses, too.

Soul Forward Method and its future are not a small undertaking. So I want to be in proximity to people who are building something equally enormous, even if it's in a completely different field. Because it takes a giant heart, a delusional belief, the killing of your ego, and balls of steel to build like this, and it feels really good to be around others who have had to walk a similar path.

Over the years, I've invested six figures in rooms like this. Memberships, mentorships, retreats, masterminds, and the travel that goes with it.

Sometimes you go into these rooms or online spaces with the idea that you're going to get X, Y, Z out of it, but what you end up getting is closer to P, H, Q. Not what you wanted, but exactly what you needed.

As I head back into this very trusted, very intentional Coterie room, it makes me think about the rooms we live in every day.

It's so easy to outsource to the rooms you have to get ready to be in, being the ones that will have the greatest impact. But you're already being impacted massively by the ones you're in when you don't have to travel or get ready for.

Who are the people in the rooms you're in? Who are you already in a relationship with? You're not gearing up for these one-off dinners or retreats. You're having them every single day with your spouse, children, siblings, friends, co-workers, family.

What are the conversations you keep having in these relationships and rooms? What are the patterns you're living your life in within them?

Who are you, because of the people you spend the most time with?

If you know a particular friend will always make you feel comfortable no matter what's going on, you might go to them when you're dealing with "the same old thing" that always happens in your marriage or whatever. Because you know they're not going to be the strong mirror to you that says, "this is what you're ignoring, you need to take a good hard look at it." They don't want to ruffle your feathers or risk things shifting awkwardly in the friendship.

If another friend tells you the truth in a way that makes you uncomfortable, you might avoid that conversation with them entirely because you don't want to look at the truth. You'd rather complain about it and get through it one more time than see what's going on and take some responsibility for what needs to happen to change it.

So where are you padding your life by choosing to keep doing it the same way you always have instead of evolving and expanding the way you're meant to?

If relationships or friendships never evolve, the dynamic stays exactly the same. And you match it in its stagnancy.

You might know you're outgrowing certain conversations, friendships, dynamics in your marriage, or the marriage itself. But if you keep doing what you've always done, and show up how you've always shown up, you're stalled out.

Imagine a mountain. Growth looks like climbing higher, but if you've already climbed higher than some of those you spend the most time with and you keep returning to the same relationship dynamics and conversations that live lower on the mountain, you're essentially walking back down to that level again and again to meet them where they are.

You keep walking up and down in the same stretch of elevation, instead of up, up, up.

When you grow and stabilize yourself at that new elevation, your growth becomes an invitation to the people around you. You become an expander of what's possible for someone who knows how to do it.

Where are you being shaped? And where are you shaping?