The Focus of the Group You Are in Determines the Kind of Person You Become
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Loading...Make sure that you are involved in groups that focus on positive things. Your success in life depends on your ability to focus on the outcomes you want, and the focus of the groups with which you associate will in turn shape your own focus. You must endeavor to always choose groups with a positive focus.
When I was around 7 years old, an international touring group of forty or so young singers and dancers called “Up with People” came to my Detroit elementary school. The group put on a spellbinding show that mesmerized me. I went to a relatively small elementary school that must have had fewer than two hundred students in it. The fact that I still remember the show—and its positive message—over thirty years later, is a testament to how good this show was. For months after the show, I remember kids from our school sang the songs the group had performed.
From what I remember, the cast members were all smiling (both before and after the show), danced through the aisles of the gymnasium/auditorium where they performed, and really put on a great show. Afterward, some of the cast members even went up to individual children in the audience and told them things like they were “precious” or that they were “cute,” making it even more memorable.
Up with People was founded in the mid-1960s, somewhat as a response to the negativity of the prevalent hippie movement. It was a positive voice for young people—instead of the more prevalent negativity of the time. Rather than focusing on what was wrong in the world, the group focused on creating world peace, happiness, and community service. The group never had any religious affiliation.
By the time I was 18, several of the kids I knew had listened to the Grateful Dead. As part of this, most of them turned quite negative. They talked about how bad corporations were and how people needed to mellow out. They soured in school and started smoking marijuana between classes. They started speaking in slow, monotone voices. Their grades slipped. Their skin turned pale. They started growing their hair long. A couple grew goatees. One got kicked out of school.
I do not disapprove of those who use drugs—but some stuff can go too far. Not everyone who drinks wine becomes a wino on a street corner and not everyone who uses drugs has a problem with it either. In terms of the people I knew who were following the Grateful Dead—stuff soon got out of control. I even knew some people who started using crack cocaine within months of becoming enamored with this group.
Despite what I knew was likely to be bad time, I made the trip to a Grateful Dead concert in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with my friends in 1988. While I never had a lot of experience with the hippie movement, watching people sell dangerous drugs to one another and take acid did not seem like a positive thing. At the concert I saw mothers with babies who had taken acid and were spinning in the aisles while the band played. There was just not a lot of positive stuff going around.
The most notable aspect of the concert for me was not when my friend (who had taken too many mushrooms) suddenly started screaming because he was so zoned out he could not see his hand. Instead, the most interesting part of the concert was the huge dichotomy I saw between the University of Michigan students who were working at the doors of the concert and showing people to their seats and the Grateful Dead fans attending the concert.
- The Michigan students were all clean-cut, sober, well-spoken, and professional looking. Michigan has always been an excellent school, and the kids working at the concert looked as if they were doing their best to prepare for lives of productivity, good jobs, happy families, and finding the good in life.
- In contrast, the people attending the concert were worn down, on drugs, unhappy looking, and seeming to represent the negative side of life.
The Grateful Dead and the people who attended their concerts back then had very obvious overtones as people who were concerned with what was wrong with society. In response, these people put themselves in a position where they were not contributing to society as much as they should.
The idea of the Grateful Dead versus the clean-cut and happy group Up with People is an image that has always stuck with me. One group stood for something happy and positive and the other stood for something negative. One group went into communities and performed community service and told people how special they were. The other group went into communities, set up tent cities, dealt drugs, and got people to drop out of society rather than take part.
After reminiscing about the Up with People event I saw over thirty years ago, I reviewed their website today. I found the following language on the site:
More impressive than where Up with People has been is the very real and sustainable change it has inspired across the globe through its contingent of alumni. For over four decades, students who traveled in Up with People have become enthusiastic leaders in their hometowns, their countries and the world. Equipped with the life skills and broad perspectives learned “on the road,” they have made a tremendous difference in a myriad of careers and through their life choices, have truly become global citizens.
I liked the idea that the Up with People group seemed to stand for and focus on so much that was positive.
There is a tremendous number of factors we can focus on if we choose:
- We can focus on the temperature of the room we are in.
- We can focus on the texture of the desk we are sitting at.
- We can focus on the meal we had last night.
- We can focus on how we felt the last time we were sick.
Have you ever known someone really down on the world and life? I have. I’ve known lots of people like this in the past. Someone who gets down on the world is likely to see everything around them as negative. People around them are seen in a negative light. Their career is seen in a negative light. Pretty much everything around them will be seen in a negative light. Instead of focusing on the surrounding things in the world that are positive, happy, and uplifting, a negative person will “delete” what’s positive and focus on the negative.
The power of focus is massive. If you choose to focus on the positive, life looks good. If you choose to focus on the negative, life looks bad. If you choose to focus on ways to be more successful, you will be more successful. If you focus on what is wrong with your job, you will see more things wrong than right. If you choose to focus on what is right in your job, then you will see more right than wrong.
The psychology of the group may focus on the positive or the negative. The focus of the organization where you work will have a lot to do with how successful the organization is—and how fulfilled the people working inside the organization are. The group psychology of an organization will generally focus either on the positive in its people and environment—or the negative.
Most of us are experts in deletion. We delete the surrounding things we do not want to pay attention to. You are certainly deleting a lot of stuff in your environment right now. If you did not delete all this information around you, the odds are very good you would never get much accomplished at all—you would be paralyzed by so much information that you could not function. So, most people only allow themselves to focus on a few things at a time. One of the true joys of our minds and psyches is that we can direct our focus.
Where your focus goes, your energy follows. Most people in the world, though, are not all that focused. Instead of focusing on the outcomes they want in their life, they get bogged down in various details. These details end up detracting them from their focus, and not much ever happens. Your ability to focus on the outcomes you want in your life and career can make a profound difference in what happens to you. Your ability to focus on what is positive and not negative will also make a vast difference.
The problem with focus, however, is that most people do not know how to use it to their advantage. Instead of focusing on the stuff that will take them forward and give them the results they want in their lives, people focus on the wrong things—or allow others to tell them where to focus.
Most people, you and me included, have something that makes up most of their focus. For some people, this focus could be on their family. For others the focus could be on their job. For others the focus could be on the sports they play. Whatever your focus is, whether creative or destructive, you generally end up becoming. The focus of the groups you associate with also plays a large role in the course of your life.
The reason that the focus of the groups you are a part of is so important is that most groups end up having a massive influence on our focus—groups have a cultural psychology that focuses on certain aspects of life. There is a reason that you can make massive generalizations about the sorts of people who followed the Grateful Dead around and the sorts of people who joined “Up with People”—both groups had an overall focus or message.
You should choose carefully the groups you associate with and participate in. I believe nothing is more important than choosing groups with a positive focus—the focus of the group will determine the kind of person you become.
THE LESSON
Make sure that you are involved in groups that focus on positive things. Your success in life depends on your ability to focus on the outcomes you want, and the focus of the groups with which you associate will, in turn, shape your own focus. You must endeavor to always choose groups with a positive focus.
About Harrison Barnes
Harrison Barnes is the Founder of BCG Attorney Search and a successful legal recruiter himself. Harrison is extremely committed to and passionate about the profession of legal placement. His firm BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys. BCG Attorney Search works with attorneys to dramatically improve their careers by leaving no stone unturned in a search and bringing out the very best in them. Harrison has placed the leaders of the nation’s top law firms, and countless associates who have gone on to lead the nation’s top law firms. There are very few firms Harrison has not made placements with. Harrison’s writings about attorney careers and placements attract millions of reads each year. He coaches and consults with law firms about how to dramatically improve their recruiting and retention efforts. His company LawCrossing has been ranked on the Inc. 500 twice. For more information, please visit Harrison Barnes’ bio.
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4 Responses to “ The Focus of the Group You Are in Determines the Kind of Person You Become”Filed Under : Featured, Getting Ahead, Life Lessons
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While your experience w the underside of counterculture obviously had a negative effect on you, your experience is limited to a microcosim. I can appreciate your take on your experience, but I think you are generalizing on your subject way too much. Not everyone who listens to the dead are drug takers and neither are all of those who would consider themselves hippy-ish. People who abuse drugs come from all walks of life. Perhaps you should do a bit more research prior to making such statements.
It appears that you’d already formed your opinion regarding the Grateful Dead and the culture surrounding them, before you went to the concert. My experience has been quite a bit different and I see much positivity in what the GD did. Many of those kids that followed them around were runaways who came from broken homes and the GD was the only place they felt safe. I know one person, in particular, who became a Deadhead. She started off as one of those clean, well-dressed kids in an affluent well-to-do neighborhood. She ran away from a home where her step-brother was molesting her from the time she was 10 years old and when she reacted to it her parents sent her to a very bad place where kids were required to live in tents in the woods and, in lieu of receiving an education, were forced to do manual labor. She ran away from that place and wound up with the Grateful Dead. She says that she didn’t just wind up with the Grateful Dead, she was re-parented. It was the only place she felt safe. She was surrounded by a group of adult hippies who were more interested in healing her spirit and wounded soul than sexually exploiting her. She was just one of many.
One can tell much about a band in the way that they spend their riches. The Grateful Dead donated untold amounts of their earnings to preserve what is left of the planet’s rain forests.
Many of the people around the Grateful Dead were members of the Rainbow Family. After Katrina it was the Rainbow Family who brought in their kitchen buses, set up, and fed the deprived people of New Orleans for months and months after the cameras and the relief workers were gone. They didn’t do this to seek attention or acclaim. It was just the right thing to do. The Rainbow have had to fight the federal government to exercise the simple right that all Americans are supposed to enjoy, to gather on public land once a year for the purpose of praying for world peace. There is more simple Christianity practiced there, in the way that Jesus taught in the Beatitudes, than one will find in any “fine” church.
We see what we want to see. One can look at a group of clean-cut, well-dressed kids and not see the horrors that happen in their homes just as easily as one can look at a bunch of dirty, unwashed kids and not see that the traumas that led them to where they are, didn’t start where they are. They may not see the simple compassion behind the facade of dirt, either.
That was a long time ago, but still brings back great memories! Enjoyed your article, a comparison I had never considered yet obvious after reading this. Hope all is well!
I’ve read the article and the comments you hace posted here and I agree with both of you, that makes me go to a conclussion. Not everyone who follow the GD became drugg addict or alcoholic, a lot of them yes. And not every people who follow the GD just wanted that by the culture. Lot of them grow with a lot of pains in their life, thats why they felt as they didn’t fit in a “happy world” lot of these kids were in a difficult situation and this kind of environmental makes them feel understanded. I think the key is the way you direct your feelings, and the circunstances, maybe the GD were more comprensive with the pain of the people and the other kids not or backwards. The point is if you focus your feelings on healing more than be nagative will take you to the place you requiere if thats with GD or UP with people. But definitely choosing GD even it apparently heals is Not as deep as Up with people, that’s why if we have now an estable or happy life we all are responsible for understand and try to provide good things to people who is suffering so they can took a better way than just being rebel.