Benjamin Franklin, one of our founding fathers has many accolades to his name and one of them has changed my life more than any of the others. I am of course talking about Poor Richard's Almanack. Sure he invented bifocals but not everyone needs them, whereas we all need the knowledge presented in Poor Richard Almanack. Instead of learning financial advice from the book, we will be learning a life lesson from it.

Every year I revisit certain books in my library because of how great their teachings are and you learn something new with each reread. You can now probably guess, Poor Richard's Almanack is one of the books I revisit yearly. Other titles that I reread yearly are; The Art of War, The Richest Man in Babylon, and Made in America. If you've been a reader for a while then you know how much I praise the financial principles showcased in this book but after recently re-reading it, I noticed something that I've missed in previous readings. There are some great life lessons in this finance book. The one I want to discuss today is "He that lies down with dogs, shall rise up with fleas." Before you take this teaching at face value and argue that your pets don't have fleas just hear me out. This teaching is not referring to dogs but the people we associate with and the fleas are the bad habits that we will pick up. I bet your brain is turning now so let me break it down in a new paragraph.

We as humans are very impressionable, we let our environment, friends, family, and media mold our personalities. Think about the way you act or talk while with different groups of friends. Whenever I'm personally around a certain group I find myself constantly switching between English and Spanish while speaking. The reason I speak like this is that it's how the group normally talks and over time I picked up the habit. We are taught to walk and speak by imitating our parents and the verbiage we use while speaking is influenced by similar factors including our environment. So, how do you think some of our habits are formed? The people who are closest to us affect in such a way that there's a famous saying based on it. "Your income is the sum of the average income of your five closest friends." So when Benjamin Franklin talks about dogs he referring to those bad influences in our lives that we associate with. If these influences are left unchecked it might even turn into Crab Mentality.

What is Crab Mentality? Crab Mentality is when a person thinks that if they can't have/achieve something then no one else should be able to. The reason it's named after crabs is that when the crabs are in a bucket and see another crab trying to escape they immediately pull them down to their level preventing them from escaping. So let's say a dog is a negative person and fleas in this case is doubt, better yet self doubt. You want to better yourself and let's say you decide to write a book. You are excited and you decide to tell the dog about it and you expect them to share in your enthusiasm. But they don't and they start being negative; they ask why are you doing it, they tell you that it won't sell, that no one will read it, they say you will spend more money creating it than it will make and ask what you know about writing a book. The dog is planting fleas on you AKA seeds of doubt. At first, you shake them off but after a while, you start doubting yourself and eventually you give up. You may say that if your will is strong that this won't affect you but remember water made the Grand Canyon and with time anything is possible. If left unattended these dogs and fleas will eventually turn you into a dog.

Back when I was doing network marketing, I was given an MP3 player with various audios from the CEO and team leaders pre-loaded on it. When I learned of this teaching my mind instantly thought of one specific audio that was loaded on that MP3 player. In the audio, the CEO tells a story about a guy (let’s call him Joe) who is starting a business and they are excited so they go down to the bar to see their friends. Joes tell his friends about the business they are starting. Joe’s friends are negative about the idea and Joe just shrugs it off. Joe continues to work the business and he still hangs out every Friday at the bar with those friends. But each time Joe goes to the bar, his friends make jokes or sly/negative comments about his business. When Joe sees no growth in his business, he starts to believe his friends were right. Joe is ready to quit the business but then Al their mentor comes to them. Al tells Joe that in order to succeed in the business they need to flush those negative friends down the toilet. In order for us to be successful, we need to cut off the negative friends we need to stop lying with dogs. I know this story is about joining a network marketing company but it can be about almost anything you are trying to do. You may want to pay off your debts but your friends tell you that you need debt so that you can have a good credit score. You want to invest in the stock market but your friends tell you that you'll lose money and that you know nothing of stocks. Do you finally understand why you can't lie with dogs?

I'm not telling you to fully cut these people out of your life, you just have to wear a flea color when you are with them. Understand that their vision and goals don't match yours so don't bring them up when you are around them. Like Kevin Smith says don't hang around with people who ask you "why" but with people who ask you "why not." Just make sure whoever is in your inner circle is empowering you instead of dragging you down.