Does the company you keep affect how successful you become?

Rabbi Landau teaches that the people around you shape what you think is normal, and that sets your limits. “Your surroundings become your standard, your standard becomes your ceiling.”

He advises surrounding yourself with successful people, “but not for the reason you think.” The money will not come from them. What changes is your mind. “When everyone around you is wealthy, your mind quietly adapts that wealth is normal, that being broke is the exception.”

The reverse is just as powerful. “If you surround yourself with people who struggle, you tell yourself struggling is just how life is.”

This, he says, is exactly what King Solomon taught: “Holech es chachamim yechkam,” one who walks with the wise becomes wise, while one who keeps company with fools is broken. Choosing who you walk with is choosing what you will come to expect from life.

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Being around successful people rewires what you consider normal, even if they never give you anything.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

Among people who struggle and settle, a person quietly accepts struggle as how life is. In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that being “broken” in King Solomon's verse means the ceiling itself collapses: a person stops asking how to get there and starts asking, “Me? There?”

Deepest human truth

Your surroundings become your standard, and your standard becomes your ceiling. When you choose who you walk with, you are choosing how high you can rise.