TOW: Under the Influence

This week has been very. very busy. And if there has been one thing I've learned (ok, I've learned many things this week) it's that you can have a profound effect on people by doing little things. The choices you make, and the acts you commit, will ultimately have effects you couldn't even have imagined, not even if you tried. Not even if you really tried. Not even if you really, really, really really, tried. No, not even if....well, you get the idea.

To have an effect on someone, to influence them, means that we create a real and personal change in someone's life because of our attitudes. Sometimes we influence people because they look up to us, like role models. Sometimes we influence people because we are authority figures, people who can give guidance at work or in our spare time.

And how we influence others always depends on our attitude. People with bad attitudes make us feel miserable, they make us not want to aspire to the things they like or admire. People with good attitudes make us feel like the weight is being lifted off of our shoulders for a couple minutes each day that we spend with them. People with great attitudes make us feel like the world can be a better place. Change is made possible through our attitudes towards others, and their attitudes towards us. Attitude is everything.

Surprisingly, most people spend a large portion of the day in auto-pilot failing to notice that other people even exist. Yet isn't it at the very moments we think nobody cares that people with great attitudes really influence us, make us feel that they brightened up our day? Aren't we often influenced by someone's choice to care about us when it seems that no one would care at all? (Unless you live in a big city like Toronto, where no one actually does care. But that is a different kind of problem, perhaps.)

You do not have to be a great leader to influence people. In fact, it is often those actions that you do effortlessly on a day to day basis that effect people the most in your life. So think to yourself, which actions do you do regularly, which of your habits continue to effect the people around you, and are they good or bad? You don't need to be phobic about your behaviour, but at the very least, realize that people are forced to drink a tall cool glass of your attitude towards the world every day. And wouldn't it be better if that tall cool glass was toxin-free and people-friendly?

So be aware that you are powerful in your own way. Because some day, some kid will remember the time you dropped his ice-cream cone in the sand-box because it was funny. And someday, that kid will be an international heavy-weight boxing champion with rage issues. And you will, when you are old and rickety, meet him in that dark alley after he's been drinking.

Not the best kind of influence.