Surround Yourself With Good People Who Hold You Accountable to Your Values, Goals, and Commitments.

“Your input determines your outlook. Your outlook determines your output, and your output determines your future.” – Zig Ziglar

Control Your Inputs to Predict Your Outcomes

If the people in your circle tolerate excuses, you will eventually make them. If they accept half-effort, you will deliver half-effort. If they look the other way when commitments are missed, integrity will erode quietly, then all at once. This is not theory; this is observable reality in every high-performing organization that has ever failed.

Standards do not collapse overnight; they decay over time through permission. One exception becomes a precedent, one compromise becomes policy, one leader looks away, and suddenly the standard has become “that’s how we’re SUPPOSED to do it…”

There’s another layer to this that’s often ignored: you must surround yourself with people who are playing the same game you are. Human beings naturally compare, compete, and calibrate themselves against those around them. That competition is not inherently bad; it is inevitable. The danger is measuring yourself against people who are chasing different outcomes, operating under different rules, or prioritizing comfort while you’re pursuing excellence.

If your goal is discipline, but your peers optimize for convenience, their “wins” will quietly pressure you to lower your bar. If your goal is long-term capability, but those around you chase short-term validation, you will constantly feel out of step and eventually be tempted to compromise. Competition against misaligned goals distorts judgment and erodes commitment.

The solution is alignment. Surround yourself with people who want the same things you want: integrity over image, standards over shortcuts, durability over applause. In that environment, competition becomes constructive. Iron sharpens iron. You raise the floor. You make discipline and integrity the norm rather than the exception.

Ideological Nepotism

I’m speaking here about the military because that’s what I know, but the following is just as common, and just as dangerous, in every organization in the world. Recently, America has become aware of a troubling shift among its military leadership in how advancement and authority are earned. Accountability has too often been replaced by career preservation, and progressing through the ranks has become less about competence, results, or character and more about adherence to approved ideas. Those who repeat the correct talking points are protected and promoted, while those who insist on inconvenient standards are sidelined or punished.

When loyalty to an ideology outweighs loyalty to the mission, standards do not merely erode; they are deliberately sacrificed.

While much of the blame is often placed on senior officers, the responsibility does not end there. Senior enlisted leaders bear a profound obligation. Apart from accomplishing the immediate mission of the day and maintaining the morale and readiness of their subordinates, what greater responsibility do our senior enlisted have than to uphold standards and preserve military culture?

We are seeing the downstream effects now. Across the institution, physical readiness, professional competence, and command accountability have too often been treated as negotiable. When that happens, corrective action eventually becomes unavoidable. Leaders are then forced to do the difficult, unpopular work of removing those who allowed standards to slip on their watch. Not out of spite or politics, but out of a genuine commitment to those they lead, to the nation they serve, and to the martial culture entrusted to them. They understand the simple truth that I’m trying to communicate here:

When standards fail, missions fail, and people pay the price.

Hard Conversations

Good people prevent failure long before it reaches crisis. They speak up early. They enforce standards consistently. They are willing to risk comfort, popularity, and even position to protect what actually matters. They do not confuse compassion with permissiveness nor leadership with consensus. They hold the line against the comfortable decay of negligence and compromise.

If you claim discipline but surround yourself with people who celebrate comfort, you are lying to yourself. 

If you claim commitment but keep company with those who rationalize quitting, your values are rhetorical at best. 

Your environment will always win if you let it.

At Honor Bound FIT, we believe community is not about comfort; it’s about alignment. The strongest teams, families, and communities are built on shared values and the courage to enforce them. If you want to become more disciplined, more capable, and more reliable, start by ensuring the people around you expect nothing less.