Cover Image: Sundara team by Danny Forest

Choose your room carefully

Let’s start with a little reflexion here:

Who shows up the most frequently at the gym? The people who take classes.
Who procrastinates the least for work? The people who have co-workers.
Who reads the most? People who are part of a book club.

See the pattern?

If you want to achieve more, you need to surround yourself with like-minded people.

But that’s only the first step!

If you are the most active person in the room, you are in the wrong room. — Zdravko Cvijetic

Working With Even Harder Working People

I used to think that I was one of the hardest working people out there.

Back in Toronto, everyone works hard, but it wasn’t common for someone to do 12-hour days.

When I left Toronto to work in Cambodia, I realized I wasn’t alone. In fact, there were people working even harder than I was.

And I’m sure some of you work harder than me too.

At AngkorHUB, where I was working from, Jeff Laflamme, the owner of the place, and his partner Jan, were working at least 12 hours per day, 6 days a week. They enjoy what they do, but they also do it out of necessity, which makes them work even harder. The stakes are high.

Working with and alongside them changed me. I worked harder and more efficiently. They elevated my standards for hard work.

I achieved so much more simply because they were in the same room, literally.

Getting More Fit

In January, I had the crazy goal of gaining 5kg of mass while losing 3% body fat. For an ectomorph like myself, it’s near impossible. In fact, it was 8+% of my total body weight. I was eating 4500 calories of healthy food every day. To put that into perspective, Dwayne Johnson eats 5000. The guy is 3 times my size.

I reached my mass gain goal in 26 days. I ended up losing 2% body fat. I was already very lean, so I’m more than satisfied.

During that period of time, I inspired other people at the co-working space I worked from in Málaga to get fit as well. I accidentally started a “fitness squad” and we grew from 2 members to 15 in less than a month.

I certainly didn’t see myself as a leader, but they followed me. They saw my results. They want to achieve more. Everyone, without exception, achieved way more than they thought they could.

We did 100 pushups every day. Most people who started thought they could only do about 10. Everyone ended up doing more than 20 on their first session. Most reached over 60 over the course of the day.

These people were in the right room, following others who were more fit than them.

Getting Even More Fit

The problem with the fitness squad for me is that I was in the wrong room. And I knew it.

But this changed in February. I had started journaling.

I thought it would be dumb. I thought I’d have nothing to write. But every “successful” person mention how great it is, so I decided it would be one of the 3 skills I pick up this month.

I won’t go into the details, but needless to say, I had SO MUCH to write about. I journaled for two and a half hours at the beach. For the last 30 minutes or so, there was a guy who came stretching close to me. We both noticed each other, simply because we were both doing unusual things.

After my journaling session, I went to talk to him. Turns out I actually played Pádel with him the previous weekend!

Gerrit is a fit guy. He’s always been into fitness. I learned more about fitness in my hour-long chat with him than I learned in my entire life I think. I had finally found a guy way more fit than me abroad.

That happy accident made it so I now know where the right room is for me to achieve more in fitness.

Conclusion

What is it you want to achieve?

Look around yourself.

Can you think of anyone who does what you want to achieve, but at a greater level?

If not, how can you turn that around?

The power of peers is unquestionable. We see it everywhere, in health, at work, in our recreational activities, etc.

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” — Jim Rohn

When we see people do, we do. When people do it better, we do it better. When we do it better, we want to do it even better.

When we achieve our goals, we have bigger goals. When we achieve bigger goals, we become unstoppable!

Be in the right room. Do more. Be better. Achieve more!

Feel free to share your own experiences in the comments below!

You can do this!

Thanks for reading! :)