Be the Influence
What are you influencing today?
According to Google, influence can be defined as “The capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself.” When you search on Amazon.com using the term “How to influence” it returns with 121,378 search results in the books category alone. Clearly influence is a key concept and viewed as critically important to a great many people, as it should be to each of us. I believe that it is when we each reach the point where we realize that we are not simply “actors” in the “play” that is our life, but the producer and director as well, that we are able to achieve the realization of just how much influence and clout we possess. We all have the power to affect the world around us in profound ways.
However, influence requires resources. Whether you are seeking to promote positive change in your own person, family, neighborhood, city, business or the world, fuel is required. Sir Isaac Newton influenced everything scientifically that would come after him by introducing an idea that would become a foundational cornerstone to the natural laws of physics, that being that in an object, velocity is constant. Therefore, an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object moving in a straight line motion will tend to stay in a straight line motion unless acted on by an external force.
Similarly, this appears to be the natural law of society — culture whether it be in one’s personal or professional life, will continue on its current trajectory unless a new influence begins to change the direction of the existing path. But this new influence must always find its source somewhere. It will always require the expenditure of resources for its fuel.
Unfortunately, too many people make the mistake of equating “resources” with financial assets or means. Now, don’t get me wrong, cold hard cash is indeed a valuable resource for influence — one need look no further than Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and the eventual creation of “super PACs” and their impact on the political landscape to recognize that truth. But money is neither our only nor our greatest resource available for creating influence. I would argue that the power of our time, energy, intelligence, skills, creativity, and willpower being directed towards the change we’d like to see is even more impactful than that of money alone when setting out to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something in our world.
The reality check is that influence requires fuel. You can’t just sit around doing nothing, sacrificing none of your resources, and expect change to happen on its own or for the next guy down the row to deal with it. The upside lies in the fact that the fuel necessary can come from any number of sources using any number of resources. And the great news is that each of us is equipped with immense reserves of these fuels that are so potentially powerful in their ability to the change the world if harnessed, focused, and directed correctly. So, I guess what I’m saying is that we all have things that are important to us, that we are passionate about, or things we see as broken and needing fixed. Be the influence.
So, what are you influencing today and why? What is the combination of fuels that you are using to power it? How could partnering with others increase the power of your influence?
As always, these thoughts are based on my personal experiences and I would love to hear from anyone that has additional perspectives by posting a comment. It is our collective experiences and unique perspectives that combine together to make us who we are and I for one am eager to seize that learning experience and capitalize on all that it has to offer.
