Is Your Circle Holding You Back?

Watch the episode here:

• Discover why personal growth often leads to changing your circle.
• Learn how Rick dealt with criticism during his weight-loss journey.
• Find out why outgrowing friends is a natural part of leveling up.
• Hear why you need to be the “dumbest person in the room” for real growth.
• Get motivated to surround yourself with people who push you forward, not hold you back.

 

Hey, I’m Rick Jordan. Today, we’re going all in I’m pumped today because this is a topic that comes up a lot, and I’m gonna give you some things today that’ll help you through life. It’s gonna be a rather mind-opening for you because everybody goes through this. Everybody goes through stages of growth in their life. Everybody goes through stages of change in your life. Everybody goes through different pressures around you when these moments happen in your life, that’s what we’re going to talk about today because you can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you. Do you hear that you can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you?

 

Every moment of growth that you have in your life, every moment that you decide to level up, every time something amazing happens, there’s an opportunity I guarantee you that you will have pressure from those around you, and I’ll explain why, because every time something good happens in your life, every time you decide you know what I don’t like, what’s going on in my life, and I’m gonna change something about this, or you’re like, I’m gonna go after this opportunity. I’m gonna embrace the amazingness that’s taking place in my life right now because something has come across my path to where it’s just what I’m going to go after, and I cannot wait to see the end of the results of this opportunity, because it’s going to be incredible. This is a reminder to everybody else around you that you’re not going to be the same person as they have known for a period of time.

 

I’ve gone through this myself. I’ve gone through this many, many times, because it’s times you level up when people will start to say crap about you and crap to you. I’ll give you one of the first real big moments in my life. It’s when I dropped a ton of weight, and this was close family, by the way, the family can be the worst, and I’ll explain why. Because family, they are ones that have known you the longest. They’re ones that can actually remember how you are and how you were, and it’s in their minds that this is how you’re going to be from this point on, especially if it’s a point of weakness in your life, and to me, being overweight was a weakness in my life.

 

I’ve gone through many times on how I actually decided to do this, and how it wasn’t actually a

 

lose weight decision, it was actually a be healthy decision, because there’s a difference between running away from something that you don’t like, or looking towards what you want and designing things around that, and putting intention in your actions to actually create what you want. So rather than running away from something, it’s like a dividing moment of time, and you’re saying, I want to be that that was history, and it’s not like I’m trying to get away from that, because I embrace what that was, because I can take the learnings from that, but right where you are right now is where most people have set in their minds and expect to keep you because when you do something amazing in your life, when you have change, that happens, when something is going on around you and you embrace this, everyone else looks at this and says, but I knew who you were, or I know who you are. I don’t want you to change, because I’m used to this. I’m comfortable with this. And the biggest thing that happened, right is when I started dropping weight, I lost 90 pounds over a period of about 15 months. 

 

This was back in 2013 and during the first we’ll say seven or eight months, if I remember, right? It really was, like 60 pounds that dropped off in that period of time. It was a lot of weight that dropped off really fast, right? And that’s because I was intentional, I was committed, I was consistent because I knew what the decision was, and when the majority of that weight dropped. I remember taking a photo when I was about 40 pounds down, and sharing it with friends and even family, like close family. I remember someone saying to me, it’s like, huh, way to go. We’ll see if it stays off, like, right to my face, and this was a family member. I was really blown away in this moment because this individual was also overweight and was just looking because it caused whatever I was going through. The way that I decided to improve my life, actually holding up a mirror in front of everybody else to where they were almost forced to look at themselves because people are used to the weaknesses that you have allowed in your life Malcolm X said, that what you begin to tolerate, you will eventually hate so in those moments when those individuals when they have similar areas of growth.

 

That is needed in their lives, and they see you making a change in your life, it’s gonna hold up a mirror, and all of a sudden they start to hate what they see because they’ve tolerated that for so long, and they recognize that you are no longer tolerating that part of your life that needs growth, and you are choosing right now to make a decision so that that is never going to be you again.

 

And in those moments, they’re faced with a mirror and looking at themselves. Most of the time, when people say something to you, it’s actually a reflection of what they are disgusted with in themselves, when they tear you down, when they say something negative, when they bring up an area of if they call it constructive criticism or, you know, just so you know, I want to let you know that this is what I see. Well, it’s really that they see that in themselves.

 

It’s hard to not take these personal when somebody says this.

 

So when I started this a little bit ago, and I said, you can’t change the people around you. There is no way possible for you to actually wave a magic wand or get into that person’s head or actually start to make things different around them. I mean, you could buy them a gym membership, if it’s if we stick with the theme of weight loss. You could start to get them, like, delivery from Blue Ribbon or something. Oh, I think that was the wrong I think blue ribbons like chicken or something or ice cream, right? I don’t know, but there’s a there’s all these delivered foods, right, that are meant to be very calorie specific for something like this. If you’re doing all this work for them,

 

it’s not gonna end up in a good result. Yes,

 

you can support them, but until they decide to make that choice of change and growth in their lives, there’s nothing that’s going to happen, because only they can change themselves. You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.

 

Because there are times that a lot of times, actually, I say this from the stage all the time, because I used to get flack from team members and everyone else. It’s like, why are you giving away all your secrets? Because we have a coaching program that’s designed in the company, that’s designed to bring people in and teach them, and then it also creates a conversation for potentially partnering up together, for them to join, ReachOut.

 

We do this, and I literally teach everything that I know to almost everybody in the industry. And from the stage. I was even the last time I was at this big conference, I was talking, and there was a Q and A time, and I got every question would launch like another five to 10 minutes cycle of teaching to where people were just so engaged and just stuck there, glued to their seats because I was given out so much. And I said, Man, I am giving you guys all my secrets tonight. I said, but that doesn’t matter, because for every 100 people that are in this room, only 10 are actually going to listen to me and recognize that there’s a change that has to happen, and probably only one out of those 10 is actually going to take action on it. So if only 10% become aware that something needs to be different in their lives, that something needs to change, that there’s an area of growth, only 10% of that 10% are actually even going to do something about it.

 

That’s just like simple math that applies to all of society, all of culture that I’ve seen to where, if there’s something that they’re faced in their lives, especially if you are the catalyst for change, which, by the way, is an awesome position to be in, that you can end up being the catalyst for change in somebody’s life. You can’t change them, but you can be the catalyst. That’s really amazing. It’s really incredible when you start to see that and you get all these positive comments coming back in. For every positive comment, you’re gonna get 100 haters, and that’s okay because those 100 haters are the people that you can change around you.

 

It will come to a point where you start to recognize and this is with friendships. I’ve had previous episodes on the show about this, to where it’s it might be time to change your circle because this is typical if you outgrow friends.

 

There’s maybe one friend that I have right now, one friend that has been a friend of mine for longer than I would say, 20 years. I’m 42 now. I’m thinking all the way back to high school, right? And friends that I grew up with, how do you lose touch? It’s not so much that you lose touch, it’s that you can be the one to decide to go after everything that you wanted to while that person is stuck in their self-limiting beliefs.

 

And it’s so frustrating, especially for somebody like me, when I want to see so much good happen for so many people, that it’s just. And oh, it’s aggravating, it’s frustrating, it’s saddening when I don’t see somebody make the change, but I’ve started to realize that you can’t change them. They’re the only ones that can decide to change themselves.

 

And then it goes on to start saying, as you begin to outgrow that circle, there’s going to be a new circle that comes in, there’s going to be new people that you can get around. I say this all the time, I want to be the dumbest person in the room. I got a lot of freaking good ideas, but I still want to be the dumbest person in the room, because there’s no way that I can come up with all the good ideas for my company, for my life, for my family, for everyone else that I’m around. And I don’t want that, because then that also means that I’m in the same circle. I don’t want to be the best one in the circle. I actually want to be one of the low ones, because that new circle came in, and as you start to rise up, sure you can maintain some of those relationships, but you might not need to be around them, because they’re going to start to bring you down if they don’t decide to make a change and grow with you. And that is okay.

 

It sucks at the moment. It really sucks at the moment. But it’s pretty amazing to still be able to look back at some of those relationships, at some of those jobs that I had, and be able to pick apart the learnings and all the different things that a lot of individuals were able to teach me along the way until I surpassed them.

 

And I’ve had so many coaches, so many business coaches, through the years. But every single time, there becomes a moment, and this is amazing, right? Because I want people to outgrow me. I want them to do better than me. It’s like how you look at kids, right? Because you want your kids to surpass you. There’s no jealousy. There’s no There’s no competition that exists. There may be some friendly competition to jab them a little bit right, just to get them moving and motivated, but there’s no jealousy, because I want them to go past me, every coach in your life, every mentor that’s in your life, it’s some time I hope that you surpass them, and I hope that they’re happy for you, and then they can learn from you. That’s happened several times in my life, too. So it’s like the dynamics in the circle shifted, but that’s that individual that continues to grow with you that’s incredible. There will be those that do not grow with you, there will be those that do fall out of your circle, and that’s okay.

 

You can’t change the people around you, only they can change themselves. When you get to the point where it starts to just drag you down and suck your bandwidth because all you’re doing is dealing with all the reasons you have those comments as I did about my weight, it’s okay, it’s okay. At that point, you can move to something else, because I was not going to ever let that stop me. I will never let those types of comments stop me, because I know where I’m going, and this is a key part of this. You have to be secure in yourself, in where you’re going. If it’s something that you truly want, it doesn’t matter what anybody else says about it.

You have to keep pushing, keep pressing, keep moving forward, and you might just have to change the people around you to get there.

That could be the only way for your dream, for your vision, for your Life, for what you deserve to go all in you.