This summer has come and, while not quite gone, is going quickly and with it so has July’s Social Wellness month. Even though it has already come to a close, it is still important to take time to reflect and plan ahead for your social wellness (doing so may even have benefits for your physical health. Personally, when thinking about social wellness, I tend to think about a quote that has always resonated with me, “You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.” This quote exists in many forms and this exact stating of it originally comes from entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker, Jim Rohn. According to Rohn, he had come to this conclusion from the law of averages, a theory in sales and business that “the result of any given situation will be the average of all outcomes.” In this way, the statement is often interpreted as a sort of proactive filtration system that individuals should employ to only allow successful people in their top 5 so that they will be more successful through social osmosis. I think of this quote a little differently. For me, it is a reflection tool to understand the impact of others on my life as well as my impact on others. The “top 5” also seems arbitrary as I do not think that the effect of the social sphere stops after the 5 people you spend the most time with. For me, the important part of the quote is understanding the correlation between the people in your life and your identity and therefore, the effect of the external (the social sphere) on the internal (you). Understanding this dichotomy is why practicing social wellness matters; none of us are islands unto o
