The Five Friends You Want in Your Life: Introduction

Greetings friends!1

Everyone has turning points in their lives, whether they note them at the time or only later. When I look back at critical moments that shaped my life, including making fateful career choices, avoiding mistakes my peers made, and going beyond what I thought I could do, I see the influence of specific people.

I can’t credit my progress to just the books and articles I’ve read, valuable though they’ve been. School wasn’t enough, although without a solid foundation, everything is harder. Individuals made the difference. People who influenced me because I observed them up close.

This is the central idea behind the “five friends” concept. You’ve probably heard the claim, popularized by motivational speaker Jim Rohn, that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Widely shared and, as stated, almost certainly an overstatement. Let’s examine the idea skeptically before building on it. I think the honest version is more useful than the bumper-sticker version.

The most rigorous scientific work on this question comes from sociologists Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, who spent years analyzing data from a longitudinal project that tracked nearly 5,000 people and their social connections over twenty years.

They found that happiness spreads through social networks in measurable ways. When one person becomes happy, a close friend has a 25% higher chance of becoming happy. Similar dynamics have been documented for smoking cessation, obesity, and drinking behavior.2

In other words, if you want to be happier, be around happy people. If you want to smoke less or drink less, be among people who don’t smoke or drink. If you want to lose weight, have skinny friends. What a fascinating idea!3

But is the idea statistically sound? The statistician Russell Lyons demonstrated that the same analytical methods, applied to sufficiently connected social networks, could appear to show that height is contagious. Oops!

Can we separate influence (you changed because of your friends) from affinity (you became friends because you had similar interests)? You’ll recognize the old correlation vs causation problem is implicated. In connected networks, it’s hard to establish causation.4

I raise this not to dismiss the premise but to be transparent about its foundations. The formulation “you become the average of your five closest friends” is a simplification that goes beyond the evidence. What we can say more confidently, drawing on a broader body of social science research, is this:

• The people around us normalize behavior. They define with their actions what is ordinary, for example, how hard people work, whether they exercise, how they handle failure, etc. We internalize these norms without fully realizing we are doing so.

• The people around us shape our emotional baseline. Positive feelings accumulate in social networks. Spending consistent time with energetic, constructive people tends to make us more energetic and constructive. It happens via direct emotional spillover and sharing activities.

• The people around us provide information we cannot get anywhere else. A well-connected friend in any field gives us access to current, personalized, experience-based knowledge that no amount of research can replicate. This is one of the most practically underappreciated effects of social connection.

These three mechanisms don’t require perfect science for us to act on. Although we have some research support, we can also see it with our eyes and check whether the mechanism passes the smell test.

The makeup of our close social circle is one of the most consequential decisions we can make, and most of us make it largely by accident.

Let me offer a more practical reframe than the “you become the average…” formulation.

Instead of thinking about your five closest friends as a statistical average, implying that a few good ones and a few bad ones will average to something mediocre, we can ask, “What are the specific functions that we’d most benefit from having in our lives?”

Just as a good investor maintains a diverse investment portfolio, providing different returns under different conditions, a wise person benefits from social relationships that offer different kinds of support, perspective, and challenge.

You probably won’t find all five functions I’ll describe in a single person. One person may have multiple attributes, but usually they’re strongest in one or two areas. No matter how many friends it takes, having all the skills available to us is remarkably powerful.

Over a long career in law and business, and after watching people either flourish or flounder, I believe five specific types of friends can alter the trajectory of our lives.

I can find versions of all five in my friends, and over the course of this series, I’ll tell you how they helped me.

1. The Skeptic demands evidence before forming a belief. They ask hard questions, notice motivated reasoning, and slow us down long enough to think twice about important decisions. The Skeptic is our protection against an expensive mistake or a belief built on bad information.

2. The Optimist does not tell us everything will be fine. They believe that hardship is manageable when we’re willing to engage with it seriously. They show the power of persistence and focusing on the long term. They give us a fresh perspective on our potential that is often more accurate than our internal estimate.

3. The Unconditionalist is the person who likes us no matter what. Their unconditional acceptance is rare in most adult relationships. Their support helps us be our true selves, take risks, and recover from failures.

4. The Pragmatist understands the difference between how systems are supposed to work and how they actually work. Every institution has an official story and the real one; the Pragmatist knows the real one. They can help identify what works and avoid the hype.

5. The Realist tells us what they actually think. Not in a hurtful way, but in good faith and with our best interests in mind. In a world where almost everyone censors what they say, someone who gives us accurate, unflinching feedback is a great person to have in our corner.

This series is for everyone who wants to live more deliberately. This includes thinking before acting, being willing to invest in the long term, and prioritizing what actually drives satisfaction in life.

• It’s for my kids and their peers, early in their careers, who have time to seek out and cultivate these relationships when they can most benefit.

• It’s for people mid-career who can look around their current circle of friends with fresh eyes.

• And not least, for people more advanced in life, who may find satisfaction in being these friends for others.5

In the articles that follow, I’ll define each friend type in detail, explain what they offer, and share my thoughts on how to find or recognize them in your own life.

If you realize that you already have all five friends, you are luckier than you know. Make sure to tell them so.

Be well.6

PS — This was the Introduction. The coming installments in the Five Friends series are The Skeptic, The Optimist, The Unconditionalist, The Pragmatist, and The Realist.