Influence

There are 5 posts tagged Influence (this is page 1 of 1).

We Influence Our Reality

One day when I was eight, and my dad was thirty-seven, I realized that I will never be able to catch up to his age, that he will always be twenty-nine years older than me. It frustrated me at the time because I wanted to catch up. I wanted to experience what it was like to be thirty-seven and I wanted to share that experience with my thirty-seven year-old dad.

But I couldn't. No matter how badly I wanted it, it just wouldn't happen.

Accepting that fact helped me realize something else: my dad will never get to revisit my age. He'll never get to be eight again. This made me feel proud to be eight. I was lucky to be experiencing something that he could not. No matter how badly he might have wanted to be eight again, he couldn't.

A few days ago I turned thirty-one. My dad is now sixty. We're still twenty-nine years apart.

I always remind myself that what's important is not your age. What's important is that you do not allow your age to influence your reality, to influence what you feel is true within yourself. How old do you feel? That's far more important than how old you are, because how old you are is how old you feel.

You choose and reinforce how old you feel by the thoughts and realities that you embrace, by what you accept and what you tell yourself is true.

I could've spent my entire eighth year wishing that I was thirty-seven, but instead -- fortunately -- I recognized how lucky I was to be eight. Today, I could think about what it means to be thirty-one, or I could think about what it means to be sixty. Or, I could simply live right here right now and enjoy it, the way I did when I was eight.

There's nothing we must handle with more care than the conversations we have with ourselves. We influence our reality, and in no greater place do we influence our reality than within ourselves.

Writing Style: Readers Welcome Influence

Your writing style influences how your readers' inner ear hears your writing.

In the same way that nobody reads Emerson using Shakespeare's style, nobody reads your writing while imposing their own style.

Readers will embrace whatever style you write with because they're reading your writing. They're listening to how you're communicating the words. Nobody reads like an editor (except editors, and they already know they're reading like editors).

The very act of choosing to read puts your readers in a receptive mode that welcomes influence, whether they realize it or not. The placement of your commas and periods, the points at which sentences and paragraphs end, the words that you choose to use, all of it influences how your writing sounds inside the head of your reader.

They do not use your style--whether good, bad, or full of errors--to judge you as a writer. (Again, editors and people inclined to read like editors are the exception, but they're not the norm and they're most likely not your average reader.)

So embrace whatever style comes natural to you. Avoid letting your inner editor judge you before others even get the chance to read what you have to say. Don't let your style, or lack thereof, prevent you from writing. What you have to say is far more important than how you say it.

Worthy of Influence

To lead a life worthy of influence we must avoid the urge to 'fit in', even if doing so means risking judgement. We must be eager to set an example, unafraid to stand alone, and always ready to step into the darkness.

If others choose to judge us for leaving the herd instead of respecting our courage to try new things, let that be a sign they are holding more respect for the status quo than for our individual potential as a human being. We are worthy of more respect than the status quo.

Judgmental Influence

Those who commit an act of superiority cause others to feel judged. To avoid being judged and judging others, we must treat everybody as an equal; not as a superior or an apprentice, but as an equal. We must respect each other's individual existence and understand that our example -- not our authority, persuasion, popularity, or command but our example -- is the only influence we have over anyone.