62 – Peer Pressure – Fighting with Status and Success

Today I want to talk about peer pressure. Peer pressure – yes, it can be positive, but most of the time it is not. Most of the time it stands in the way of success and wealth.

First I want to discuss a little bit about kids, because it’s really kids as an analogous discussion will lead into parents. First of all, what happens with kids? You’ll see peer pressure causing them to take on risky behavior, but it also affects everything from the fashion that they wear, to alcohol and drug abuse. Friends are constantly recommending, or pushing, or pursuing them to do certain things. It affects who they hang out with. Do they hang out with the right or the wrong people?

You’ll see the recommendations. I went and searched around for recommendations. I don’t think I saw a decent recommendation anywhere on the web. They would say things like: “Just say ‘No,’” and some of the dumb ads on TV that sit there, and the father says: “You’ll tell me, won’t you, if people want you to drink?” Oh, come on. Come on, folks. What you have to do is you have to have them address the underlying pressures that exist. They’ve got a whole bunch of people, saying: “Are you afraid? What are you going to do? Come on. Let’s do it.” How do they resist that?

I’ll tell you a little bit of a story of how I got one person to do this. I don’t want to mention too much detail, because they might be a listener, but it was somebody that was just finishing up grammar school, headed into middle school, and at that time there was concern, both by the parents and family members around because this particular child always followed everybody else; whatever they wanted to do, she would just go along.

One of the discussions I had was: What do you do and say when everybody’s telling you to do that? Do you ever have that situation, where somebody says: “Come on, come on. What are you, afraid? What are you, afraid?” Of course, the person starts to shake their head, and of course they do, and they hear that all the time. We all did.

What I did was say: “What you do is you just turn around, look that person straight in the face, because there’s a whole bunch of other people with them. If they weren’t with them, they wouldn’t be saying that to you. Turn around and say: ‘I’m not the one that’s afraid. Those others, they’re afraid. They’re afraid to say ‘No’ to you.’” This person did that, this child did that, and completely changed directions. Why? Because other people, then, started to feel that confidence. The person became popular, very popular. The child was pretty popular before, but then became very popular, was very independent, and had some of the tools.

There are other things you can do and say, but the idea is you have to give them something to say in response, not just: “Say ‘No.’” That doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked for a hundred years. People have been pushing it. You think the kids are much stronger or can be stronger. When they have that pressure, they’re usually facing a group of people, and some that they look up to. Most assume the characteristics that they must have – they don’t. They’re vulnerable, and they don’t have the strength. They need something to make them feel strong.

The interesting thing, though, is it would be best if the adults were able to display those characteristics themselves; that they weren’t, in a sense, pushed into situations where they were influenced heavily by peer pressure, too. How do you expect kids to fight peer pressure if the adults don’t? Take a look at all the debt that exist, in many cases, because of peer pressure. Purchases that don’t even make sense to people, but they have to keep up with the Joneses, they have to keep up with other people.

I saw that amongst executives at different companies that I was at. There’d be a release of the new Apple iPhone or the new Xbox, and key executives would be talking about the fact that they got it on the first day. “Look at this one,” or “Look at that one,