Surround yourself with people who have the same goals and aspirations as you do. Make this a conscious choice. Do not allow the people around you to get you down, belittle your goals or in any way distract you from the achievements you wish for yourself.

If you want to run a marathon you do not join a book club. You don’t join a walking club either. You join a long distance running club. You do this so that you can learn from experienced runners, listen to talks by nutritionists, hear advice on training programmes from running experts and for the encouragement you get from all involved.

If you want to get on in your work environment you join up with the staff members who are enthusiastic, who are constantly learning new things and are prepared to share with you, who are prepared to work long hours and who encourage you to do the same.

Would it make any sense to socialise with staff members who constantly complain about their boss, their colleagues, the tea, the equipment or the work environment in general? Is this the kind of person who will encourage you to work harder and to better yourself? Not likely.

In every situation of your life you have a choice to keep company with people who don’t want to get better or those who are driven to improve themselves. Your choice.

If you are happily married and you socialise with your single friends what does this do to your relationship? If your single friends constantly tell you how much fun they are having going out on their own, being able to come and go as they wish and in general have loads of fun, do you think this makes you appreciate your partner?

Have a look at your life and see where you have people encouraging you and where you are surrounded by people who are miserable with their lives and want to make sure everybody around them is just as miserable.

It might be an idea to change company. If you want to stay happily married, then don’t go out every week with your single friends. If you want to get fit, don’t spend all your time with people who think exercise means lifting a drink to their lips.

This principle applies to every part of your development. As a youngster in high school you want to share your time with young people who have the same thinking as you. This is quite difficult at times.

School times are dominated by your thoughts of wanting to belong to the right crowd. Regrettably the ‘in crowd’ or ‘trendy’ people are the ones who spend more time on looking gorgeous and having the right partners, than on actually studying and improving themselves.

This means that at an early age we tend to think that following somebody is the most important part of our existence and we spend our time running after people who we think will allow us to belong. What does this do to our lives? It certainly doesn’t get us anywhere, except behind somebody else.