Who Influences You the Most ? 3 Reasons to Change the #1 Most Influential Person in Your Life
The saying goes that you are influenced by the five people you spend the most time with. We pick up on their habits. We use similar language. We spend money the same way. We earn money the same way. We frequent the same locations.
Who is in your top five?
No really, stop and write them down.
Is it your family? Roommates? Co workers? Neighbors? Church members? College friendships that have lasted? Maybe they are celebrities whose lives you follow. Maybe they are mentors. You read their books, listen to their podcasts, watch their shows, etc.
Now comes the point. In listing the five people you spend the most time with, did you mention yourself?
If there is only ONE person on that list that you spend the most time with, shouldn’t that be yourself?
Here are the reasons why YOU should be the #1 most influential person in your life.
Act, Not React
You are the one person who has complete control over your life. You are the one that makes the choices and how to deal with circumstances as they arrive.
Each day we are given thousands of choices, if not more. They are small and subtle, but we make them just the same. If you don’t think so, just stop and think about this for a minute with me.
What time did you wake up? Did you set an alarm? Did you snooze said alarm? Which clothes did you pull out of your closet? Did you speed on the way to work? Did you make time for any self-improvement? Did you simply do what you do every day? Did you call a family member or friend just to reach out and say hi?
What did you do today? What did you NOT do today? These are all choices we make and on a daily basis.
There was a time when I felt like I didn’t have any choices. I had to get up and I had to go to work, where they tell me everything I should do.
Let me just tell you, it’s not a happy way to live. I am ever so grateful that my life came crashing down around me while living in that state. When everything disappeared, life stood still.
I had nothing and as a result had no direction to move. Time did not stand still, not a chance. It was my life that didn’t have a direction to go. For once, with everything in my life gone, I didn’t have to simply react to the commands of another. I had to choose where to go and what to build in my life.
You Choose Your Top 5
You are the most influential person because you are the one who chooses the five people who will influence you most. People come in and out of our lives on a constant basis. You are the one who decides who gets to stay.
This is often a hard decision to make. So we also have to decide how to make this decision.
Do we choose to keep people in our lives that need us the most? Do we choose mentors that we are building and want to be like? Do we choose people who give us what we need?
There are a variety of reasons we allow people to stick around in our lives. But you are the one who chooses that reason and as a result, choose the five people who have the most influence in your life.
There have been times in my life where I was strongly influenced by people that were not helping me to become who I wanted to be. They were constantly struggling and if you were around them, you knew it. The would share all of the cruel injustices they received from life and at the hand of others. They were victims and allowed that to consume their thoughts.
And though I was trying to help, they didn’t want a way out. They were victims and were going to stay that way. I couldn’t keep that in my life unless I, too, wanted to become a victim of the circumstances around me.
I don’t want to be a victim.
Having already learned the amount of control I have in my own life, I made a decision that was hard, but so good for me. Opening that space up in my life allowed other people who were headed the same direction I was headed to come into my life. Not only were they headed where I wanted to go, they were far ahead of me in the journey and I am continually learning from them.
Wherever You Go, There You Are
We are constantly bombarded with information and things other people are doing, saying, thinking, feeling. There are people that constantly need our attention, our time, our ideas.
That’s not a bad thing. It’s good to be involved in other people’s lives. It’s good to give and share your time and talents with others.
However, there needs to be time taken just for you.
You are the one with the most control over your own life, who simply delgate that to someone else?
You are the only person that you cannot exclude from your life. You are always present, even when you aren’t aware of that.
We can be going and doing and seeing and hearing so many things. The world we live in today makes sure there is a constant and steady stream of thoughts, ideas, events and so on that can influence us that if we don’t take control of that stream, we are left feeling empty.
If all of our time and attention goes elsewhere, we have no time for ourselves, the things we want. This can leave us feeling rejected and dismissed. And by our own self!
How can we expect to get any good things in life — promotions, relationships, peace of mind — if we aren’t even willing to take time for ourselves?
If we can’t give ourselves the time of day, how can we expect others to?
Give yourself a bit of time. Do something you love. Pick up a new hobby. Learn something new. Figure out who you want to be, what you want to do, then do it!
What This Means
Being the most influential person in your life means that you have to be the one to make decisions.
We live in a world where indecision is growing rampant, but in order to influence our own lives and take control for what happens, we need to know what we want. Once we know what we want, we can effectively make decisions to get us to that goal.
It’s not a bad thing to want something more than what we have. Especially not if we are willing to make the decisions, sacrifices and put in the work it takes to get there. In fact, that is needed. Without a desire for something more in our lives, nothing ever changes. At least not in our favor.
Life happens to all of us. Hard things come. Good things come, too, but significantly less often than if we are doing something about it and working towards positive change in our lives. Not only do we have to want it, we also have to believe we are worth the energy we put into the good things.
Which, for the record, you are.
You have seen things in a way no one else has seen. You have learned lessons that others need to be taught. You have a contribution to make and can change the world.
The Most Important Decision
To be decisive and go after what you want, the most important decision you will make will be you.
Choose to invest in yourself. Choose to love yourself. Knowing that you are worth time and effort — even if other people can’t see it — is one of the most important decisions you will make.
You won’t just make it once, either. You will have to choose this time and again, because as I mentioned before, hard things come. There is no such thing as an easy life. Not for the rich or poor, the good or bad. Struggle is going to come.
This doesn’t mean you choose yourself above all others and anything and everything else, always. Sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves is to take care of another.
I have a dear and giving friend who is always looking out for me and has taken such good care of me in times of need. Yesterday as I was leaving her place, I apologized for missing an appointment with her earlier because I wasn’t feeling well. Her patient and understanding self said, “Hey, it’s ok, sometimes you need to take care of yourself.”
However, I know a good thing when I see it. Often times she doesn’t understand how amazing she is and how needed she is, so I let her know by responding, “YOU are part of taking care of myself.”
I do my best to take care of and give to this amazing woman because I know how selfless and giving she is. It doesn’t matter if it’s me she is giving to or to another soul she is helping and taking care of. While I don’t expect anything in return, neither does she.
However, I do need her example in my life. Taking care of other people is something I like to be reminded of once in a while. If I never received help from her again (despite the fact that I’m human and probably will), I know that she will be giving something to someone else just based on her caring nature.
Going back to the original point, it’s just like the flight attendants say when giving instruction before every flight, you have to put on your own oxygen mask before assisting another. Make sure you are in a position to be able to give by first investing in yourself.
Conclusion
Of all the people in the world, there is only one person that is able to make real and lasting change. You are the one who constructs the world around you. No one else can do the work for you, and if they do, it’s not likely a direction you want to go.
Going with the flow isn’t always the best mentality to have. Taking the time to make decisions and shape the life we want is important.
There are many, many good things in this world to see, do and experience. But if we don’t take the time to figure out which of those things we want, we get left with the scraps at the end of the meal. Don’t take life’s leftovers. Choose from the vast menu of options, or create your own meal.
You have the most influence in your own life and once you realize that, life seems to open up to you. The world is now yours.
Now What?
It can be overwhelming to suddenly make all the decisions. So I have created a short guide to help you start where you are and how to build upon traits you have to create the life you want.
Get my FREE guide Control Your Story (←Click Here and I’ll send it to you) to figure out where to start and some great tips on how to make a change.
Also, tell me how much you like this article by clapping up to 50 times. This allows more people to see it!
