How The People You Surround Yourself With Reflect On Your Character

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Brianna Garcia-Andrade, Writer

Have you ever been judged based purely on the people that you hang out with? If the answer is yes, did you feel like it was fair? Most people would say that it’s not fair to judge someone based on the people that they surround themselves with, but what if there is some truth to those assumptions? Although you can’t fully understand someone by observing the people they hang out with, you can get a pretty decent idea of their overall character. Believe it or not, the people that you choose to surround yourself with do reflect on your character.

Even though everyone is their own person, studies have shown that we are greatly impacted by our environment. This means that the people closest to us often influence the decisions we make, our way of thinking, and the values we hold. We tend to choose our friends based on the good qualities that we see in them; we admire those qualities. People get along best by finding common interests and values. Unconsciously, we can find pieces of ourselves in the people closest to us. That’s how they reflect on our character.

Just like we see bits of ourselves in our friends’ personalities, we hold bits of our friends in our own, whether that be our sense of humor, our hobbies, or simply the way we carry ourselves. Some of it is influenced by the people closest to us, which is why by observing them you can determine a lot about someone’s character. For example, sometimes you can determine a person’s morals by looking at the morals of their closest friends. A person isn’t going to be friends with someone who they believe goes against everything that they believe in. If someone does something morally wrong and you choose to continue surrounding yourself with that person, then it says a lot about your own set of morals. Nobody is going to be friends with someone who they believe is a bad person.

Weirdly, sometimes we feel like our friends know us better than we know ourselves. That’s because nobody knows you better than your closest friends. They’re like a mirror. As the Elite Daily said, “Friends have a distinct way of reflecting back each other’s fears, insecurities, and strengths in the most comforting ways.” Studies have also shown that the more time you spend with a person, the more likely you’ll be to pick up on each other’s characteristics. So, of course, the people that we surround ourselves with are gonna reflect on our characters. It’s who we are most similar to at the end of the day.

In conclusion, we are more similar to the people closest to us than we realize. Even if we don’t want to admit it, people could probably get a decent understanding of our character by observing the people around us. Take a look around at the people you hang out with because that’s probably how people who don’t know you perceive you. Do you think your friends are a good reflection of yourself?