Deliberately seek the company of people who influence you to think and act on building the life you desire.
Hill on choosing peers on purpose. The honest review of your current rooms is uncomfortable — and most people leave it to luck.
The line is long. The instruction is short: pick your peers on purpose.
Hill’s specific word is deliberately. Not naturally. Not eventually. Not “let it happen.” The default for most adults is that your peer group is whoever you happen to be near — colleagues, neighbors, the friends from a phase of life that’s already over. Hill is saying that’s a system that won’t take you anywhere new.
The shape of the choice
There’s nothing romantic about this. It means looking at your current rooms — the lunch tables, the group chats, the recurring meetings — and asking which of them are quietly shaping how you think. Some make you sharper; some erode you slowly enough that you can’t see it happening. The honest review is uncomfortable because you’ll find people in the second category who you genuinely like.
“Deliberately seek” means you adjust who you spend cognitive attention on, not who you cut from your life. The two are different. Most people read this quote as permission to be cold; it’s actually an instruction to be intentional.
What I keep seeing in mastermind rooms
The members who get the most from the room are the ones who notice they’re getting it. They came in deliberately, they show up deliberately, they bring problems they actually want challenged. The ones who drift use the time to commiserate with whoever happens to also show up.
The room helps because it gives you a peer environment by design. It doesn’t replace the work of choosing other peers too — but it’s a place where Hill’s principle is operating by default rather than by accident.
Where this sits in the method
This is Alliances & Networking (Pillar 4) in the Mastery Method. It’s downstream of Mindset because it requires you to take a clear look at your current rooms, which is hard if you haven’t sorted yourself out yet. It’s upstream of every other pillar because who you think with shapes how you think about everything else.
Hill’s word again: deliberately. The quote is an instruction to do the work that most people leave to luck.
See also: What is a mastermind? · If you find yourself weak in persistence, surround yourself with a mastermind group · Help others succeed first