One of my favorite verses from the Bible comes from Proverbs, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”

This is one of my favorite scriptures as it reminds me to keep my inner circle full of positive, forward-thinking people. Those are the ones who challenge me mentally, physically and spiritually. But as life take us down different paths, there are times when those in our circle take a different path, and we must make changes for continued growth.

In my skip-Tracing classes I teach, it is human nature for each of us to have a core group of people, both professionally and personally, that we surround ourselves with.  It is the skip-tracer’s job to locate those people in order to gain the subject’s new location. 

We all have the core group of people and the beliefs and attitudes of those within it affect our personal and professional life. It is important to take a look at your own core group. It is also important to know as we go on our various paths of life, the people within this group change as we lose contact with some friends and make new ones.

Despite the rotating roster, we always have a few that remain within the group for a lifetime.

When one of these core people becomes a negative force, their toxicity can contaminate you. I am certain each of you have a friend, a client or a co-worker who can suck the happy out of a room just by entering it. 

They are the Debbie Downers, always ready with bottomless pits of bad news and judgmental perspectives.  They can magically and tragically turn any positive into a negative. There’s also the sly manipulators who figure out how to push your buttons to bring out your anger. Then you have the narcissists who are so completely focused on themselves that they function as a black hole, swallowing up any positive energy that you may harbor. 

Those who aren’t building you up are bringing you down. A much-publicized example is the meltdown of an actress or actor who spends the big bucks on extended stays in rehab to become clean and sober, only to return to the same negative group that enabled the behavior in the first place.  Predictably they almost always return to their usual bad habits.

There are many types of negativity and many ways to model the behavior. These undesirables with their destructive energy will affect you both personally and professionally, as you expend more time and effort dealing with them, deflecting them, and trying to avoid contact with them altogether.

I remember my father telling me when I was a kid that, “You are known by whom you hang with, young man.” As an adult, that simple advice guided me in building a core group of beneficial relationships among people who foster positive growth and share common goals.

If you have someone toxic in your group, may I suggest that you take a play from baseball and change your line-up?  Taking that player out of your game will measurably improve both your personal and business relationships, and ultimately boost your winnings.

I can’t take credit for the post or the title this week. While attending an American Recovery Association conference. I had the honor of meeting and listening to Chris Hogan of the Dave Ramsey Group. Hogan’s topic was leadership, and during his keynote address he made the simple statement about “changing your line-up” really hit home for me and I had to share this enlightening concept as it is something we skip-tracers must do in order to grow our rolodex and our business but as humans we also need to practice this concept to build fruitful lives.

It is also important to take a long look in the mirror at times just to make sure that you are part of the solution rather than part of the problem

Do yourself a favor and check our Hogan’s blog at www.chrishogan360.com or follow him on Twitter at @chrishogan360. You won’t be disappointed.

Until next time, be blessed, be safe and happy hunting!

Alex Price is a nationally recognized expert on the art of skip-tracing. Currently he is the executive vice president for MasterFiles with more than years of experience in skip-tracing, collections and public speaking. He can be reached at alex.price@masterfiles.com or (972) 735-2353.