Who do you hang out with? Who are your buddies?

Who are you going to call when you want to go out and have a good time?

I am Ron Ramsden, a DYB Coach, and a painting contractor in Massachusetts.

You are the average of your 5 closest friends.

Think about that, if you are the average of your 5 closest friends, is that a scary thought?

Does it make you say, “oh no”?

We are going to go through a little process that’ll get you thinking.

You can do this on a piece of paper or maybe you can take a minute to reflect on this.

Your 5 closest friends may be really fun to be around, but they may not be the cream of the crop or someone you aspire to be…

Let’s go through this little process.

Let’s use 5 names: Bob, Tom, Evan, Mark, and Carl.

(Please don’t take offense if your name is up there, they’re randomly chosen)

What we actually track is their money, not the amount of money but how they spend it.

Are they good with their money? Are their finances in order?

I don’t care if they have $3,000, $300,000 or $2 in the bank.

What I want to see are their finances. Are they in order?

Do they control money above board well? Are they broke?

Do they plan? Do they plan for their retirement?

Basically, on the up-and-up, we want them to be financially stable.

We are also going to deal with relationships. How are their relationships?

How’s their relationship with you, with their spouse, with their girlfriend or boyfriend, and other people?

Are they going through divorces all the time? Are they breaking up with their boyfriend or girlfriend all the time?

Are they a person who doesn’t get along with a lot of people?

The third thing we’ll track is health. Health is a big thing.

When you’re young you don’t think about it all the time. Most of us didn’t but as you get older you think about your health.

Are you eating right? Are you exercising regularly?

Try going to the gym or for a hike.

It might inspire you to complete other goals.

You may want to go for a 5K run or a marathon.

We are going to track all three of these on a scale of 1-10.

I listed 5 names earlier and please, if you are any one of them, don’t take it personally.

These names are pulled out of the thin air and they are not reflective on any one of you.

Finances:

We are going to start with Bob. I put these names up and I just went through their finances, their relationships, as well as their health.

Bob is okay with money. Bob never has any extra money but he does pay his bills.

He might buy a new toy when he can’t really afford it but he’s not underwater.

We are going to give Bob a scale of 5.

You can rate this on your own and you can figure out a 1 and a 10.

Next up is Tom. Tom is pretty good at saving.

He saves for rainy days. He is actually planning his retirement.

He is not rich by any means and he is not well-off and ready to retire but he has a good grasp on living expenses.

We’re going to give Tom an 8.

The third name is Evan. Evan is doing well.

He is saving too like Tom so I let’s give him an 8.

Mark and Carl both got 6, a little better than Bob.

They do have a few dollars in the bank.

They don’t owe everybody more than they make.

It could be much better than 6 but like I said, you have to be the judge off of what a 1 and a 10 is.

I know a few 1s out there who seem to have it all, but they actually owe everyone in the world and they are probably underwater most of the time.

Relationships:

Although Bob is getting by with his money, he is not too good with his relationships.

He seems to go through a few. He hasn’t had anything succeed.

He is not great, maybe he’s a yeller.

He is a fun guy to be around but he’s not great with relationships.

Based on this we’ll give him a 4. Poor Bob!

Then comes Tom. He’s either happily married or with someone for a long time.

He is a great guy to be around. He has great relationships with his friend and family and he seems to have everything going very well for him.

Next is Evan. Evan is doing great, we gave him a 7.

He has a pretty healthy relationship.

I don’t know anybody who has a 10 out of 10 rating in relationships because we can always work on something better.

Going back to the dollar amount, we also consider charity.

Are they a giving person with their money?

In relationships, we have poor Mark and we have poor Carl.

They are not doing too well with their relationships. It seems like they are coming and going with a new person all the time.

We’ll give a 4 to Mark and a 5 to Carl.

Health:

Here we have Bob up first. Bob’s health is not doing too well.

He had a heart attack and he’s still drinking and smoking.

Unfortunately, he’s still above ground but Bob is not doing too well.

Hence we’ve given him a 3.

Tom, on the other hand, seems to have his life going on a pretty good trend.

He is also exercising regularly. He goes to the gym in the morning and for an occasional bike ride on the weekends.

We’ll give him a 7.

Evan and Mark are not doing too well. They are kind of holding their own.

They go to the gym sometimes and exercise a little bit. We’ll give both of them a 5.

Mowing the lawn doesn’t count as exercise, it’s something you should be doing regularly.

Shoveling the driveway, we don’t consider that exercise.

Exercise is when you actually go out and stimulate your body.

It might be a 30-minute work-out in front of the TV, with one of Jane Fonda exercise tapes or whatever it may be.

Then we have poor Carl. Carl is doing okay with his money, he is above board.

Carl has a 5 in relationship but unfortunately, his health is a 2.

He just had a quadruple bypass because he hasn’t been taking care of himself and he is back to smoking again.

We look at these numbers and they don’t look well for some of these guys.

I am putting this out there and saying these are the guys I hang with.

They are actually not, but consider these are the guys I hang with.

They could be guys and girls. I just wanted to list guys.

One caveat to this is, we’ve done this many times through our different mastermind groups we have; through the DYB coaching.

Some of the people can’t list 5 people and that’s okay.

They are more intimate kind of people, they have 2 or 3 really good friends.

They might have a few church friends but they only could actually list about 2 or 3 friends.

If that’s the case with you, go with those 2 or 3 friends and use those as your average.

Let’s go to the average.

Like I said, this is a 1-10, so we’ve got to add all these up for a 1-10.

Our average is 33 out of 50 on the money for all average of all our friends.

Relationship has a 21 out of 50. If you look at these, my guys here are failing in their relationships.

Our average in health is  22 out of 50.

If this was the average of my 5 friends and things aren’t going well in my life, in my relationships and money is tight, maybe I need to relook at things.

Imagine if I hung around with people who have all their eggs in the same basket.

If they are doing well financially and I am hanging around with 4, 5 of these guys, I am probably going to pick up a little of that.

I am going to raise myself financially.

I am not going to be going out, widely spending money when I shouldn’t be spending.

I am going to be subconsciously thinking about money.

If I am hanging around a bunch of people who are happily together with someone else and they treat everybody how they love to be treated, conversations will go differently.

We’ll have a different look at our lives, as well as our relationships and it will actually raise us up.

Some of the relationships might be driven by church-going people.

They go to some of the groups that are offered in churches and maybe I will be going to something like that or some other kind of group that raises me up.

In one of our groups, we did a man walk, in which we went hiking for a day with the guys from church and it was great!

If you are hanging out with people who exercise, guess what? You generally exercise.

You are hanging around with people who are glad to go hiking on weekends, they’re probably going to get you out there.

You might have never run before but a couple of your buddies run and you decide you want to run your first 5K. They are going to have your back for that.

You will have someone to run with. You will have someone to talk to.

It’s easier when you have that behind you, someone who encourages you to exercise a little bit, even if you are not into running.

If it’s an outside walk, if it’s lunchtime or before work, you get up a little early and just get after it!

You shut the TV off earlier at night so you can do these kinds of things.

If you want to raise where you are right now, do this little test:

List your 5 buddies; guys or girls and you can see where you stand.

It’s going to make you think.

If you want to talk to me, you can reach out:

I am Ron Ramsden, a DYB coach, and a painting contractor.

You can send me an email at ron@dybcoach.com

You can also find out more about DYB at JoinDYB.com

Find me on Facebook, send me a message and I’ll be happy to chat with you.

Take a look at your relationships and put some money in that paint bucket today.

Have a great day!