As people have known for ages, there is something encouraging, stimulating, and even inspiring about being affiliated with others.

It is especially motivating when those others are seeking to achieve the same goal or types of goals that you are.

The following factors need not be present on your quest to affiliate yourself with others, but they can certainly help:

1. Striving for the same goal at the same time -- The classic example here is two students studying for an exam. They're in the same class with the same teacher and thus obviously have to take the same exam at the same time. A similar phenomenon is at play among a yacht crew racing team, a presidential candidate's aides, or a special task force assembled by the head of an organization to achieve an established goal.

2. Same intensity -- When affiliating yourself with others, it helps if members of the team, whether it is two people or more, proceed with the same intensity toward pursuit of the goal. If you and I are studying for an exam and your goal is to ace it, but mine is to simply pass, it's likely that we won't be as much help to each other as if we were both trying to ace it or both simply trying to pass. Not that some benefit can't be derived from such team work, but going with the odds, equal intensity serves affiliates best. Likewise, the yacht crew racing members will muster their greatest strength if each member individually as well as the team collectively has as his goal to win the race.

3. Geographic proximity -- The closer you are geographically to those with whom you are affiliated in pursuit of a goal, the more support you can derive from one another. Certainly, with the Internet and e-mail, the geographic barrier is not what it used to be. Depending on the nature of your goal and the nature of your affiliation, you certainly could have a partner in Kuala Lumpur even if you live in Duluth, Minnesota. Or, perhaps the nature of your goal is such that you meet on a weekly or monthly basis in Chicago, a quarterly basis in Ottawa, or at some annual symposium held at various locations throughout North America.

For most goals of shorter duration, affiliating with someone from the same regional or metro area facilitates your receiving benefits derived from all the sparks that could fly as a result of your face-to-face interaction.