Friday, February 4, 2011

Guilty by association

In perusing the Internet for random facts of nonsense, I recently read a study by Nicholas A. Christakis and James Fowler from Harvard Medical School regarding obesity and its relation to an individual’s social network.

The study forms the conclusion that an individual’s chances of becoming obese are increased by 57 percent if they are tied together by no more than two degrees of separation and the percentage increases even more when the subjects lived within a close geographic radius from each other.

In other words, when mom used to tell you that you actually were “who you hung out with,” she was dead on (as moms usually are, despite our kicking and screaming).

The fact that this study proves that individuals are more likely to be overweight if the people they hang out with are overweight brings things into perspective. It doesn’t have to only be applied to obesity. Much of this can also relate to drinking habits, study habits, spiritual development and any host of socially encouraged behaviors.

Surrounding yourself with people with like interests is what draws friends together, but it can also affect the person you become thereafter. While initial like interests lure you in, their other personality traits also become a part of the package.

Their own personal habits will mesh with yours, as will theirs to you. Therein lay the danger, as the stronger personality usually provides a majority of the influence and it leaves each and every one of us susceptible to altering our own personal belief systems.

As a coach, this couldn’t possibly be any more important as not all of our players’ friends are athletes or model citizens. If they happen to spend a great deal of time with morons, dropouts, druggies, hooligans and any other adjectives with a negative connotation, you will most definitely see a drop in performance and leave your whole team open to this potential virus creeping in.

The study exposes our occasional failure to think long and hard about who we make a priority in our lives. Alcoholics usually hang out with alcoholics, drug addicts generally maintain a tight circle of fellow drug addicts, free thinkers usually hang out with free thinkers and character-driven people usually surround themselves with those who also maintain that set of personal morals.

In a dangerous game of “Six Degrees of Separation,” one must take serious inventory when choosing those they surround themselves with. If you run with wolves, you yourself will become a wolf, finding your own life on a path that could very easily lead to destruction or worse…