Every day, you make dozens of critical decisions for your personal and professional life, but there’s one decision that may have more impact on your career trajectory and fulfillment than any other: who you allow to influence your thinking, shape your beliefs, and reinforce your daily habits.
The person you call on your commute home, the mentors whose advice you seek, the podcast voices in your earbuds, even your social media feeds, all are quietly architecting who you’re becoming. And while it may seem that career paths are serendipitous, in my almost 200 interviews on the Vet Life Reimagined podcast, the biggest influences to success are said to be other people that they met along the journey.
Research shows that without intention, you accept whatever influences are habitually around you, which is unlikely to fully align with where you want to go. So what if you approached your social circle with the same intentionality you bring to strategic plans or patient care decisions?
The Science Behind Social Influence
Jim Rohn, the motivational speaker who inspired figures like Tony Robbins, famously observed: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” This sentiment traces back to ancient thinkers like Aristotle and Confucius, who recognized that proximity shapes both character and success.
Rohn’s memorable quote highlights how your environment and social circle directly impact your mindset, behavior, and trajectory. These individuals can inspire growth or encourage stagnation, making it crucial to intentionally choose people whose ambition, drive, and values align with who you aspire to be.
The science supports this. In the landmark Framingham Heart Study, researchers Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler analyzed over 12,000 people over 32 years and found that behaviors and health outcomes spread through social networks up to three degrees of separation, meaning your friend’s friend’s friend can influence your life. When one person became obese, their friends were 57% more likely to become overweight. Similar patterns emerged for smoking cessation and happiness. Personal experience shows this, as well. I have caught myself speaking differently when cursing was heavily used in my husband’s work setting.
In the close-knit Animal Health industry, we can absorb far more from our environment than we realize. From colleagues who normalize working through lunch to the emotional posts on social media, these influences impact individuals, work cultures, and the profession itself.
In Animal Health, a field with a reputation of high burnout rates, compassion fatigue, and evolving business models, the people around us either reinforce destructive patterns or illuminate better paths forward. A toxic work environment can quickly erode your passion, while an inspiring mentor can reignite your sense of purpose during a difficult case. Each incident represents the cumulative weight of influence shaping who we become and where our career may go.
Aligning Your Circle with Your Values
If people can subconsciously impact our behaviors, emotions, and career paths, what can we proactively do? The first step toward intentional relationship-building is clarity about your core values and goals. Who do you want to be? Do you want better work-life integration, improved finances, clinical excellence, innovative thinking, entrepreneurial success, or a voice in animal welfare advocacy? Once identified, these values become your compass for evaluating relationships.
Next, take honest inventory of your current inner circle. Are the people you spend the most time with pushing you toward or pulling you away from the life you envision? This isn’t about judgment, but honest assessment of their impact on you and your behavior. The colleague who constantly complains about clients without seeking solutions may be reinforcing cynicism. The associate who discusses new treatment modalities with genuine curiosity may be nurturing your growth mindset.
We often maintain relationships out of habit, proximity, or obligation rather than alignment. While we can’t always choose our immediate colleagues, we can be deliberate about where we invest our emotional energy and whose perspectives we actively seek. You may not need to relocate or change jobs, but you might need to create distance from influences that keep you tethered to an outdated version of yourself and enhance influences in other avenues.
Expanding Beyond Traditional Networking
Modern life presents unique challenges that historical thinkers like Aristotle never faced: we’ve moved geographically away from family, religious networks have weakened, remote work is common, and traditional “third spaces,” places outside work and home where people naturally gather, have diminished. We spend enormous amounts of time on social media, where people often aren’t their best selves.
But technology also expands our possibilities. With intention, we have access to a larger, more diverse pool of potential connections to help us achieve our goals.
In-Person Conferences: Veterinary conferences remain invaluable for building meaningful connections. Chatting with the person beside you at a lecture or thanking a speaker afterward can gradually build an “advisory council” of trusted voices you turn to for difficult decisions. Make it a goal at each conference to genuinely connect with at least one person whose approach to practice, life balance, or professional challenges you admire. Remember, no single person can help with every goal.
Virtual Connections: Your circle of influence needn’t be limited to in-person meetings. Don’t hesitate to use video calls to connect with people you’d like to learn from. While there’s no full substitute for face-to-face relationships, some of your most impactful “mentors” may be authors, podcast hosts, or thought leaders you’ve never met.
Books and Podcasts as Silent Mentors: In a recent conversation with Dr. Quincy Hawley, co-founder of Get MotiVETed, we bonded over our mutual discovery of personal development books and podcasts early in our careers that shaped our mindsets. Reading works by professionals inside and outside our industry who’ve navigated similar challenges allows you to absorb their wisdom when you need it and prepare for future challenges, whether burnout risks or career decisions.
Podcast listening creates a unique form of parasocial mentorship. Whether commuting to work or walking your dog, you can regularly tune into content that influences your mood and mindset and sparks ideas. The consistency of these voices means hosts and guests become part of your regular circle of influence, subtly shaping your thinking about professional challenges and opportunities.
Online Communities and Masterminds: Virtual groups organized around specific interests like exotic animal medicine, fear-free techniques, practice ownership, or wellbeing allow you to connect with like-minded professionals beyond geographic constraints. You can even form your own small virtual or in-person masterminds around a particular focus. These communities provide accountability, diverse perspectives, and collective wisdom that can accelerate your growth. Just remember to regularly audit whether these communities are truly helping.
AI as a Thought Partner: Artificial intelligence represents another frontier in expanding your circle of influence. While AI cannot replace human mentorship, it serves as an always-available sounding board for exploring ideas, finding the right words, or receiving feedback on strategies. You can even ask AI to respond as a specific well-known individual for more targeted perspectives.
The key is using AI mindfully and intentionally, just as you’d choose which conference to attend or book to read. Allow it to help you think outside the box, provide devil’s advocate positions, or explore areas where you lack personal mentors.
Taking Action: Your 30-Day Circle Assessment
Start with tracking who and what influences your thinking and mood. Note the colleagues you seek out for advice, the media you consume, and how you feel after these interactions. Do certain relationships consistently energize you toward your goals? Do others leave you feeling depleted or cynical?
Then identify gaps. If you aspire to better business acumen, but lack mentors in that area, seek out books on practice management or entrepreneurship podcasts. If you’re drawn to shelter medicine, but work in private practice, find online communities where shelter veterinarians share their experiences. If you want to improve clinical skills in a specific area, identify thought leaders in that specialty and follow their work.
Finally, make space. Expanding your circle sometimes requires pruning relationships or media consumption that no longer serve your growth. This might mean limiting time with perpetually negative colleagues, unfollowing social media accounts that fuel comparison and inadequacy, or declining committee positions that drain energy without providing meaningful contribution. This alone might energize you to find the right people who can fuel your growth and happiness.
The Ripple Effect
As you intentionally curate your circle to support your own growth and values, you simultaneously become a more positive influence in others’ lives. Your renewed passion, clearer boundaries, innovative thinking, and aligned values make you the kind of person others want in their inner circle. You become part of the positive “average” that lifts those around you. The more you live a purposeful life you’ve chosen to pursue, the more you attract people you want to be around.
We cannot afford to leave our growth and well-being to chance. The people and voices we surround ourselves with, whether in person, through books, earbuds, or screens, constitute the environment in which we evolve. Choose that precious environment carefully, because the outcome is nothing less than the professional and personal life you create.