"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with." The line turns up on posters, in podcasts and in self-help books, and its source has never been found. It sounds like arithmetic. It is closer to biology.
In one test, 104 young adults were asked to give a series of speeches with a friend in the room. Half of them had been asked to bring a friend who was simply supportive. The other half brought a friend they had mixed feelings about, someone who was good company some of the time and hard work the rest. During the speeches, the second group's heart rate climbed more, and they felt more anxious. And even before the first speech began, and again after the last one ended, their blood pressure was higher.
Each friend later gave feedback on the speeches, but the difference showed before a word of it had been said. The body had already made up its mind. The heart, it seems, keeps its own guest list.
So the people around us shape more than our mood. They can lift us, steady us and inspire us, or drain our energy and quietly hold us back. And we get a say in who we surround ourselves with.
Is the saying true?
Half of it. The influence is real. The "average" and the "five" are not.
Moods, habits and even weight travel through friendships, and they travel further than five people. Powerful Signs You're on the Right Life Path has the 4,739 people followed for 20 years, where a nearby friend becoming happy raised a person's own chance of happiness by 25%, and the link reached three steps out, to the friends of a friend's friends. Why People Fail at Weight Loss (And How to Succeed) has the same pattern for weight, and The Real Reason Your Habits Never Stick has whole groups of smokers stopping together. And it is not simply a matter of who sits nearest: the happiness spread between neighbours and nearby friends, and not between co-workers.
So we are not an average of anyone. Arithmetic would be tidier. People are not. We are part of a web, and what moves through it reaches us whether we chose it or not. That is the reason to choose with care.
1. Identify positive influences
Some people leave us feeling more capable than we were before we met them. Those are the ones to see more of.
They matter for the body as well as the mind. Key Factors That Speed Up Aging (And How to Slow Them Down) has the 148 sets of findings covering 308,849 people, where those with stronger relationships were 50% more likely to be alive at the next count. And 5 Ways to Build Your Inner Strength and Live a Fulfilling Life has the hill that looked less steep when a friend stood beside it. For the long view, by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz draws on a group of lives followed for more than eight decades, and its main lesson is about relationships.
Write down the people who consistently make you feel good about yourself. Plan more time with them, and a little less with the ones who leave you tired.
2. Seek mutual support
The best relationships run both ways. Each person can lean on the other in a hard week and cheer the other on in a good one.
The giving half may matter more than we think. Older married couples were followed for five years. Those who gave practical help to friends, relatives and neighbours, or emotional support to their husband or wife, were less likely to die over that time. Getting support made no difference once giving had been taken into account. Being needed, it turns out, is good for us.
What we give also travels. Strangers were shuffled through a series of money games in which each person could give to the group. People whose group-mates had given more went on to give more themselves in later games, with new players who had not been there, and the effect reached up to three steps out. Each extra contribution ended up tripled by the people it influenced.
The cheering half matters too. How someone responds to our good news says a great deal about them, and Relationship Red Flags You Should Never Ignore, linked below, has what it means when good news keeps landing flat.
Check in with someone when they might need you, not only when you need them.
3. Set boundaries
Healthy relationships have clear edges. A boundary protects our time and energy, and it keeps a friendship respectful on both sides.
Saying no is usually the hard part, and it costs less than we fear. 5 Types of Boundaries for Healthier, Happier Relationships, linked below, has the people who imagined turning down an invitation and expected far more upset than the person inviting them actually felt. A kind no is still a kindness. For the words to use when it feels hardest, by Nedra Glover Tawwab is full of them.
Family is the company we did not choose, and the lines there can feel riskiest. 5 Types of Boundaries for Healthier, Happier Relationships, linked below, also has the couples followed over many years, where a husband feeling close to his wife's parents went with a lower risk of divorce, and a wife feeling close to her husband's parents went with a higher one.
Next time you want to say no, say it simply and without a long excuse. And respect the limits other people set in return.
4. Recognise toxic relationships, and the mixed ones
Some people are clearly bad for us: the one who criticises constantly, who takes advantage of our kindness, who leaves us drained every time. Those are easy to spot, even when they are hard to leave.
The mixed friend is harder. Remember the speech test. The friends who raised blood pressure were not enemies. They were people the volunteers liked some of the time, and the body reacted to them as a strain before they had said a word about the speeches. A relationship that is warm one day and cutting the next can wear on us more than one that is plainly cold, because we never know which version will turn up. We can dress for bad weather. Changeable weather keeps us guessing.
Relationship Red Flags You Should Never Ignore, linked below, has the patterns that mark a relationship as more than just difficult.
Notice how you feel after time with someone. Anxious, smaller or exhausted, again and again, is worth taking seriously.
5. Embrace diversity
Friends who do not share our exact background, beliefs or life stage widen the view. They also change how we see whole groups of people.
When 515 sets of findings, covering 713 separate samples of people, were pooled, contact between people from different groups typically reduced prejudice. And the effect usually spread beyond the people actually met, to the whole group they belonged to.
Say yes to the conversation with the neighbour, colleague or club member whose life looks least like yours.
6. Be selective with your time
Time and energy are limited, and close friendships need a lot of both. Lonely in a Crowd: Why Connection Feels So Hard Now has the small circles we seem built for: about five closest, around fifteen good friends, and about a hundred and fifty meaningful relationships in all.
So let the draining connections go. But keep the light ones. Students were happier, and felt more that they belonged, on days when they talked with more of their classmates than usual. The chat with the person at the market stall, the wave to the neighbour, the quick word with a colleague: these count. Small talk is not so small.
Put your deepest effort into a few people, and keep saying hello to everyone else.
7. Build healthy habits together
Misery loves company. So, it turns out, does a new habit. Healthy changes pass between people who live together. In 3,722 couples aged 50 and over, when one partner quit smoking, the other was far more likely to quit too: 48% of men quit when their partner had just stopped, against 8% when their partner kept smoking. For women it was 50% against 8%. Becoming more active went the same way, 67% against 26% for men and 66% against 24% for women, and so did losing weight.
The surprise was who helped most. A partner who had just changed made a bigger difference than one who had always been healthy. Company in the change, it seems, counts for more than a good example.
Food helps too. The Hidden Ingredient That Changes Every Meal You Cook has the strangers given the same food to eat, who trusted each other more in a money game and cooperated more in a mock pay negotiation than strangers eating different foods.
Find a walking or workout partner, or book a cooking class with a friend, and start the new habit at the same time. When you eat together, put one shared dish in the middle of the table.
8. Nurture relationships with effort
Friends come from where we keep turning up. In a look at the Westgate student housing at MIT, published in 1950, friendships formed most between people who lived closest together, and people who live near a building's stairways tend to have more friends on other floors. The meetings have to be pleasant for it to work; repeated bad encounters make a friendship far less likely. But mostly, a friend is someone we kept bumping into. Friendship is partly a question of where the stairs are.
Then it takes hours, and they can be counted. Adults who had recently moved to a new place were asked about someone they had met since. It took roughly 50 hours together to go from acquaintance to casual friend, about 90 to become friends, and more than 200 to become close friends. Hanging out counted. Time spent working side by side counted for less.
Laughter may be part of why hanging out works. 10 Ways Laughter Is Good for Your Health and Happiness has the twelve men who watched comedy clips with close friends for half an hour, after which scans showed their brains releasing their own opioids, the chemicals behind pleasure and comfort.
Aristotle got there first. He quoted the old saying that people cannot know one another "till they have eaten the requisite quantity of salt together", and that the wish for friendship may arise quickly, but friendship itself does not.
The small gestures in between hold it together, and they land better than we expect. People who sent a short message to check in on someone underestimated how much it was appreciated, and the gap was biggest when the message came out of the blue, from someone a little more distant. by Marisa Franco is a whole book on making and keeping friends as an adult.
Send one "thinking of you" message today to someone you have not spoken to in a while.
9. Be authentic
Showing our real selves, strengths, weaknesses, hopes and fears, is how trust gets built. It feels riskier than it is.
Why Your 'High Standards' Are Holding Back Your Career has the people who saw their own asking for help as weakness and the same act by someone else as courage. And Lonely in a Crowd, above, has the liking gap: after a conversation, people underestimate how much the other person liked them.
Being real runs both ways: it means being curious about the other person too. 7 Communication Tips for Your Relationship has the people who asked more questions, especially follow-up questions, and were liked more for it, though few expected that.
Next time a friend asks how you are, give the true answer instead of "fine". "Fine" is a door, politely closed.
10. Evaluate regularly
We change, and our relationships change with us. Some grow closer, some need adjusting, and some come to a natural end.
Before letting a relationship go, look at the ones that have already drifted. Executives were asked to get advice on a work project from people they had lost touch with, and the advice compared well with what their current contacts gave. The most useful reconnections were to people they had spent less time with in the past. The executives still preferred to contact the ones they had been closest to, because getting back in touch made them anxious.
The old word helps here. "Friend" comes from the Old English frēond, literally a loving one, from a root meaning to please or to love. It shares that root with "free".
Now and then, ask of each close relationship whether it is still supportive and still kind, in both directions. If it is not, step back or make a change, and think of who you have lost touch with before you look for someone new.
The friend in the room
Go back to the speeches. Before the mixed friend had said a word about them, the blood pressure of the person giving them was already higher. We are not the average of the five people around us. But they get into us, right down to the blood pressure.
We cannot control everyone around us, but we can choose who gets our hours. Are the people closest to you helping you grow? If not, it may be time for some careful changes.
This week, give one hour to the person who leaves you steadier than they found you.
Is saying no the hard part? 5 Types of Boundaries for Healthier, Happier Relationships — what a boundary is, why yes comes out when we mean no, and how to set one that holds.
Is a relationship more than just difficult? Relationship Red Flags You Should Never Ignore — the patterns that show a relationship has moved past ordinary disagreement.
Know someone who has just moved somewhere new? Send them this, and offer them their first hour.
Disclaimer: This article is general information. For advice about your own health, talk to a qualified health professional. If someone close to you makes you feel unsafe, contact your local emergency number or a support line.
Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, All For Life earns from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. We only link to products we would recommend without the commission.
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