Why Your Friends, Feeds, and Feels Are Tanking Your Trades
You're not just a product of your choices... you’re a reflection of your influences. Let’s clean up the input and watch your life transform.
Your Mind is a Garden… What Are You Letting Grow?
If your life is a movie, influences are the directors, editors, and soundtrack. In The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy hits hard on the idea that your inputs (what you hear, see, and who you hang around) shape your outcomes more than you think. This chapter is all about auditing your environment and making intentional changes to what influences you.
The formula is simple:
Garbage in = Garbage out.
Greatness in = Greatness out.
Let’s break it down.
Three Major Forces That Influence You
Input (What You Consume)
Hardy calls out the daily diet of negativity: 24/7 news cycles, fear-based social media, and soul-sucking gossip. What you read, watch, and listen to feeds your mindset.
Want a stronger mindset? Start reading things that grow your mind and unplug from things that shrink it.
Associations (Who You Spend Time With)
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. That includes coworkers, family, friends, and yes, even the online voices you follow. Hardy suggests:Disassociate from toxic influences
Limit time with neutral ones
Expand time with empowering people
If you’re learning to trade, hanging out with gamblers, complainers, and drama-lovers will drain you. Find people who think strategically and aim to grow.Environment (Your Surroundings)
Your environment should reflect your goals. If your desk is cluttered, your phone is full of distractions, and your habits are built for comfort (not growth) your environment is working against you.Make small tweaks that create momentum: a vision board, a trading calendar, a clean space, a daily habit tracker.
Trader’s Takeaway: Influence Your Influences
If you’re trying to become a better trader, you need better influences.
Here’s a quick checklist from the book that you can tailor to your trading journey:
What podcasts or channels do you listen to each day?
Are you in a trading community, or an echo chamber of FOMO and hype
Does your environment support focused analysis or feed constant distraction?
Do the people you talk to believe in your goals, or secretly (or openly) doubt them?
It’s time to prune the weeds and plant some winners.
Favorite Quote from This Chapter
“You will get in life what you accept and expect you are worthy of.”
– Darren Hardy
Want better results? Start expecting more from your inputs.
Wrapping Up
The "Influences" chapter reminds us: you're not stuck, you’re just tuned in to the wrong station. Want to change your life (and your trading)? Change what you listen to, who you spend time with, and the environment you operate in.
You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your inputs.
Quick Glossary
Input: The information you consume daily (news, books, media, conversations).
Associations: The people you spend time with and who influence your thoughts and actions.
Environment: Your physical and mental space; the setup and surroundings that support or hinder your goals.