According to psychology, there are two major agents of socialization. The first is the family, while the second is peers.
Peers are like a two edged sword, their influence, either positive or negative, can cause either the betterment of a child, or can cause a bad influence on a growing child which can wrongly affect them in the future.
I have heard many cases and seen some situations where the influence of peers made people deviate from the righteous way in which they were brought up. Peer influence could shift a person's mindset drastically, with no hopes of getting that person back in track.
In this day and age where survival of the family depends on the extreme hard work of parents, it is quite easy for peers to influence an unsuspecting child due to the fact that their parents are busy and have little or no time for their kids.
No matter how busy parents tend to be, I have come to understand that spending the most little time with your kids and giving them listening ears while guiding them with love, is actually a great way to gradually fight against negative peer pressure.
Due to the fact that peers always influence a child negatively, when someone talks about peer pressure the major thing that comes to mind are the worst. However, when contextualizing peer pressure, I like to divide it into two, which are; the positive peer pressure and the negative one.
Growing up as a kid, I was pressured a lot. I have lived in the ghetto neighborhood, and I have lived in a church. However, one thing I have noticed in all these experience is that nobody sees the bad in what they do. Everybody feels like what they are doing is good, thus, they want other people to do it.
Though most times, peer pressure do have a negative impact, there are times when it serves a good purpose. Peer pressure can actually be a good thing, but it greatly depends on the type of peers that surrounds a person.
For the past few years, I happen to see myself among people that are willing to be successful at all cost, given that what they are doing is legal, people who see themselves as rival in a positive way.
When I became friends with this group of people, I thought they were the over serious type. At that time, though I was equally success-minded, I didn't actually see life from their perspective. The way they hustled, it was as if their life is ending the next minute. They hardly rest as they go from one job to another.
All they care about is to increase their value and improve their worth. They believe that by doing so, their finances will also grow.
From then till now, I have come to adopt that mindset. Though these people are not actually my peers (I hardly relate with my peers), they influenced my mentality to a very great extent.
With them, I got a shift in perspective which made a contender. Currently, I have achieved quite a lot of things, but funny enough, I don't actually count them as achievement prolly due to the fact that my perspective has changed drastically. What people see as a very big achievement is what I see as a stepping stone for a bigger achievement.
This change in perspective has been very good for me. I actually don't use be all that serious with hustling, but then, with the advent of these people, I was able to up my game and the results are really good.
The experience taught me that when a person is with the right people, they will do very good.
Thank you for reading.
