The Power of One More

6One More Association

You will never outperform your inner circle.

—John Wooden

WHEN YOU FINE‐TUNE YOUR ASSOCIATIONS, you allow yourself to transform your actions and radically enhance your results. You could be one association away from changing your entire life.

As a One More thinker, you have an obligation to keep refining your peer group of friends and family members, so they add value to your thoughts, goals, standards, and outcomes. One of the most powerful dynamics in the world is to be productive and blissful in ways your peer group expects of you.

The bottom line is this: You may need to either change or expand who you associate with because who you allow into your inner circle is critical, and you must cultivate and invest in these people as a means of investing in yourself.

Your Relationships Define You

Your relationships directly impact how you function in the world. Since the day you were born, you've bonded with other humans. Your caregivers and immediate family were your entire world early on. As you grew, friends, others with shared interests, and your work associates became your focus.

You have been defined by all these relationships throughout your entire life. Some have added tremendous value. Others have been a big waste of time.

Consider the words of the poet John Donne, who wrote:

No man is an island,

Entire of itself,

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if ...