You have heard that you are the average of the five people closest to you. It is repeated so often that it has gone soft, so let me sharpen it into the form that actually predicts things.
It is not one average. It is at least three, running at the same time, and they do not move together. There is a spiritual average. There is a professional average. And there is a financial average. I want you to remember that every single time, wherever you are on the social ladder, you are going to have very similar people with you.
That third one is the one nobody says out loud. Every single time, wherever you sit on the social ladder, you will be surrounded by very similar people. When I was earning $126,000, almost my entire circle was somewhere between $100,000 and $150,000. I did not have one single friend earning a million dollars a year. Not one, and I had not decided that. A little below me, a little above me, and that was the entire spread of everybody I spoke to in a normal week.
That pattern held at every income I ever had. Is that a story about the friends I chose?
No, and that is why it matters. When I was making $30,000, I didn't have any friends who was making $120,000. I was not excluding anybody and nobody was excluding me. It's very interesting. It is not bad and nobody in it is doing anything wrong. It's just what's happening in the society, and it is kind of realistic once you stop arguing with it. Your income is not only yours, it is the room's, and the room regenerates its own average whatever any individual inside it intends.