Each one of us has gotten ourselves wherever we are. Yes, you’re responsible for every action you take. Yes, you’re responsible for every reaction you have. And yes, your success (or lack thereof) is yours.

But you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

I know one thing: you didn’t do it alone.

You are the product of all who’ve come before—and all that you’ve done since.

Some say the key to success is to “be awesome.” I agree—but I also see that “awesome” is the product of three things: ability, attitude, and access. All three of those depend on people: how they rate your ability, how they accept (or reject) your attitude, how they grant (or deny) you access.

Understanding who those people are, and how they’ve affected what you’ve done, is a critical element of understanding how and why you have, or haven’t, made things happen in your life.

Much like there’s a literal genealogy of who you are—the hard-coded DNA that’s a product of all the people in your family tree—there’s a genealogy of success. Where you are now is a product not only of what you’ve brought, but the people to whom you’ve brought it, how they’ve reacted, and perhaps most importantly, how you’ve responded to their reactions.

But do you know who they are, the people who’ve shaped you?

In high school, I used to say that, after my parents and sister, I was shaped by nine people, seven books, and two musicals (yeah, okay, I was an unabashed “arts geek”). These days the influence pool is a little different, and time gives me better perspective on just how influential those people, books, and musicals were.

But I can still trace much of who I am now to who I was (and was becoming) then.

While every person you interact with has the potential to change you in some small way, some people have a greater impact than others. We forget, I think, to remember with any kind of regularity who those people are and what effect they’ve had. But understanding that—understanding who has led you to where you are now, or has helped get you there—can help you figure out how to get even closer to your vision of what you want to be and what you want to accomplish.

It can help you figure out what qualities in others bring out the best (or worst) qualities in you or what it was about someone that pushed you to do great (or terrible) things. Once you know that, you’re more highly attuned to those same qualities in the new people you meet, and more able to fully appreciate those people who’ve been with you all along.

Where do you come from?

You have personal genealogies of success and professional ones. There are the large trees that shape who you are as a person, and smaller, more specific ones that shape how you came to be doing a certain thing in a certain place. This post, for instance, has this tree:

Joyce Linehan
Geo Geller
Mike Langford & Jeff Cutler
Chris Brogan
Amber Naslund (I think you know who she is!)

Each one led to the other, which led to my writing this. I didn’t control how they came into my life, but I did control how (and if) I accepted the gift each brought. I owe them, each in turn, for how they’ve helped me (even if, until this moment, they weren’t aware that they did).

Knowing who they are, helps me appreciate more fully not only from whence I’ve come, but the extent to which I can help others as they’ve helped me—how I can, for lack of a better phrase, pay it forward.

You can do the same thing.

So, I want to know: Who’s on your family tree?

Image credit: Patrick McMahon