Look around at the people you work near every day. Not your clients, not your followers; the people physically closest to you while you do your work. Because whether you realize it or not, they are quietly setting the ceiling on what you believe is possible.
We like to think we’re self-made, that our drive is immune to our surroundings. But the truth is less flattering and more useful: we absorb the energy, pace, and ambition of whoever is around us. Put yourself next to people who are coasting, and coasting starts to feel normal. Put yourself next to people building something bigger than themselves, and suddenly your own “someday” list starts to feel a little urgent.
The quiet danger of a comfortable rut
This is where working from home, for all its perks, can quietly cost you. When your only coworkers are the dog and the hamster in the next room, there’s no one modeling a bigger move. No one sitting nearby closing a deal you didn’t know was possible. No one whose energy makes you sit up straighter and think, I should be working on my best stuff right now.
Even in an office, proximity can work against you. If the people around you are clock-watching, complaining, and playing small, that becomes the water you swim in. You don’t notice it happening. You just slowly settle into the same groove everyone else is in, and a groove, repeated long enough, becomes a rut.
The problem isn’t a lack of talent or ideas. It’s a lack of the right proximity.
Proximity to greatness is contagious
Here’s the good news: the same force that pulls you into a rut can pull you out of one. Get close to people doing exciting, ambitious, slightly-intimidating work, and something shifts. Their standards become your reference point. Their momentum becomes a current you can ride. You overhear a conversation about a launch, a pivot, a bold ask, and it rewires what you think is normal for someone like you.
I’ve watched it happen over and over here at The Village. Someone joins a community of doers, and within weeks they’re moving on a project they’d been “thinking about” for two years. Nothing changed about their ability. What changed was who was sitting ten feet away. [see our post on WILDFLOWERS: What they teach us about community]
I have been a firm believer of this idea for many years and why I even dedicated an entire chapter in my last book, Changing Directions and Starting from Scratch. I called it “Surround Yourself with Balcony People” — the natural encouragers who sit up in the balcony cheering you on, as opposed to the Basement People who keep you comfortable in the dark, listing every reason to stay put. As I wrote in that chapter, excellence has a lot to do with proximity; when it comes to doing bold new things, nearness is powerful. Or as Tony Robbins put it: proximity is power. When you stay close to people who play small, you tend to sit right there beside them.
Where to find your better room
So how do you engineer better proximity on purpose? Start by being honest about your current one. If the conversations around you leave you drained instead of fired up, that’s your signal.
Then go find your Balcony People. Maybe they’re in a networking group you haven’t discovered yet; one where the room is full of builders, not just business-card collectors. Maybe it’s a mastermind, a meetup, or a regular standing coffee with two or three people who are a step ahead of you. And maybe it’s the environment you work in every single day.
That last one is the most overlooked (and you knew I’d say this). The space you work in isn’t a neutral backdrop, it either feeds your ambition or starves it. The right environment surrounds you with people whose presence makes you want to do your best work and come back hungry tomorrow.
The conversations that change everything
Proximity is really about conversations; the kind that leave you itching to go get busy. The ones where someone mentions a goal so big it makes yours feel reachable, or where you walk away with a new idea, a needed introduction, or a jolt of remembering what you’re capable of.
You can’t manufacture those conversations alone at your kitchen table. You have to put yourself in the room where they happen.
That’s exactly why we built The Village Workspace; a place where the proximity works for you. Where the people at the next table are doing their best work, and that energy is contagious.
If you’ve been stuck in your own groove lately, come see what a better room feels like. Explore membership at The Village Workspace and spend a day in proximity to people building something bigger. It might be the only change you need to make.