Who Influences You?

Take a moment and do an experiment with me. Inhale. Exhale. Yep! You’re alive!

If you did what I just asked you to do then I had a moment of influence over you and the choices you choose to make!

Think about it for a moment, everything you do is followed by others around you. Your actions spread your influence to others. Some close. Some far. Some loved. Some are not so favored. Some innocent is following your every move wanting to adapt their choices to your choices. Some are smirking, “One day they’ll learn you can’t do that and survive!” Some are looking for success and they think the magic pill of the moment is to follow and duplicate your every move. There are classes to teach you how to replicate the skills of another and if you are successful you will become just like them!

Right? Well. They sure want to think that! But the reality is that we each carry a different DNA sequence, come from differing backgrounds, and influencers of our past often prevent us from changing into a different person. Many times you have to “deconstruct” who you are so you can rebuild yourself into who you “think” you want to be!

In the mid-’70s, I worked for an oil tool company and frequently used a program called “Ditto.” It was meant to duplicate a card deck, and later it was upgraded (I think) to duplicate a digital file. You would wrap the “JCL” (Job Control Language) around the deck of cards, read it into the card reader, and wait for the newly punched cards to appear in the output tray. Most of the time, it worked! Sometimes the card reader misreads, and sometimes the card punch is miss punched…

So. What is Influence? One dictionary says it is “the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself.”

Notice two operative words.

• Capacity is not the same as a “done deal”. It has the ability to influence by the actions or lessons presented, but it does not necessarily produce the results in someone else.
• Effect” is not the same as “affect”. Everything affects me as I allow it to, but I control who has an effect on my growth!

We are affected by new laws every year as lawmakers respond to some perceived need on the horizon. I mean, distracted driving now must define that it includes texting and not just putting on makeup, or changing a diaper on an infant…wait, is that child in an approved car seat?

Just as the latest and greatest product that replaces an old standby favorite. Things go out of vogue and are replaced by new fads. I’m still holding on to some ties from yesteryear because they keep saying they will come back into favor and I won’t need to buy a new one! Regardless, I’m affected by fashion changes even if I don’t wear skinny jeans! What??? Yep. Manufacturers make fewer of the jeans I like because they have found a new market and they switch over to where the new bucks are! Just like car manufacturers. And every other product line!

Be honest with me. Did you buy a pet rock, and then later buried it when it lost its influence over you?

There are people who should never watch infomercials. Everything being sold is something they simply have to have. Their credit card is memorized so they can buy what that smooth-talking TV screen has to sell.

I keep coming back to this thought over and again. Paul is teaching the church of Philippi and telling them to follow his lessons of influence so they can reproduce as he reproduced. Let me share the ESV translation. Can you see the influence he had on them?

“What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”  Php 4:9 (ESV)

This is my message from other posts… Thimk and Do…

Thimk and Do (Click to Read my thought on Thimk!)

Our influence does not wear out as the seasons change around us. They are real practice examples of life lived in a different time, but the morals and lessons are important to all future generations. I mean, I still think about Solomon’s lesson from his book of Proverbs.

“Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.”  Pro 6:6 (ESV)

Now… if my influence is strong, grasshopper, you will read the next 9 verses on your own and see what Solomon is trying to share!

Here’s one last thought. “He who thinks he is a leader and has no followers is merely taking a stroll through life.” You are an influencer when you can see your followers. But rest assured, someone somewhere, when you least expect it will pick up a piece of your influence and pass it on to their circle of “influence”…