How Do You Influence Other People?

Your influence at home

There are so many influences we leave behind from crawling out of bed in slow motion in the morning to climbing back into the covers at night.

For those of us who have children or grandchildren, we engage in conversations that produce sometimes long-lasting effects. What we say and do evolve from cause and effect, both of which begin with a thought process. Those thought processes belonging to others from age two on up, all the way up, can be repeated just by what we say and do. Children learn by examples and as adults, we oftentimes repeat the lessons learned in our own childhood because those examples are embedded in our minds including redundant behavior patterns.

We live with so many experiences that influence our emotions and way of thinking. Without misfortune and affliction, there is no greater sense of fate or affections. There is a greater power in this universe that supposes people must reach a point in their lives where a strenuous situation occurs, and that somehow they just have to endure. 

It's like being handed a chore to handle, and you do it. Hopefully, with the influence we received growing up, we endure challenges because we learned how to be strong and how to keep trying to reach for solutions.

We live with disappointments in life, but we can influence another person just by the manner in which we handle a disappointment.

How do you handle disappointment?

With everything we encounter in life, there will be moments when all we have are our thoughts as we strive to maintain and improve the direction of our lives. With those thoughts, we can build a healthier perspective so that some of the mild disappointments we experience won't seem as overwhelming. When we think about how we’re going to respond to anything, think about tone with family members and those we work with because, without a positive tone, we set a bad influence by our example.

You may not whistle while you work, but you don’t have to earn the title of “the complainer.”

Your influence at work

We all live with influence, information, attitudes, and different forms of energy every single day. When we go to work on Monday morning and hear the same people make the same commentary that goes like this, "Well, it's a Monday!" if you're like me, you stand there asking yourself, "What does that mean exactly?" At least once, someone on the following Monday will say the same words. When you're already wishing for Friday, you're wishing living time to go faster.

Both of the "Monday" types of influence and attitudes can set the tone for someone's day or the remainder of the week. When you go to work and you choose to have a more positive influence on those around you, start off by asking, "Hey, did you have a great weekend?" 

You might want to avoid those who make the negative comments about Monday because they might waste your time for 30 minutes and let you know just how bad their weekend was. Most of us have a person like that where we work. 

The best influence you can leave in the office is a positive one. Who cares if you get labeled in a snarky way, "the happy one?" What a compliment that is! If you improve your state of mind, your positive level of influence goes up. Whether it's at home or at work, you're influenced by others just as they are influenced by you.

Be a busy bee in life, not a busy body because if you’re the latter, it will come back and sting you someday.

How did you learn and what did you learn?

As far back as most of us recall, we grow up, mature, get out in the real world, get a job, and become responsible productive adults.

We needed to become involved with business by getting a job as well as the business of becoming routinely productive. We enjoy being active, but not everyone enjoys employment unless it involves a satisfying field that is sustainable and economically rewarding. Likewise, those of us who are fortunate to be entrepreneurial and successful find the experience rewarding.

Every contributing factor in life up until the point in time when we accepted our first job were necessary and instrumental pieces of influence, and the influence in the workforce continued to shape our minds and lives. What we choose to do in life may do more for us than other things outside our careers.

Our bodies are strengthened with physical labor and our minds are made sharper with intellectual labor. Our judgments are shaped and changed and influenced.

© Cathy Coombs