What Is Your Biggest Sphere Of Influence?

Wherever you go and whatever you do, there is a degree of influence going on. This influence works in many directions and on many levels. One of the things that I’ve learned as a Life Coach is that my internal influence systems (IIS) must be greater than any external influence systems (EIS).

Okay, what do I mean by that? Well firstly, you must understand that there are many factors of influence on your day to day world. These can be people as individuals, groups of people, television, radio, adverts, billboards, media, newspapers, you, careers advisors, taxi drivers, and list just goes on. All the above mentioned factors have a level of influence over you in some form or another. It will be in varying degrees and levels but what you must acknowledge is that it is happening all around you in your day to day life.

I know many people whose entire lives are ruled by the TV. They never miss certain shows and they often end up becoming like some the characters that they see. I know because I was once the same too! I love “Friends” the show, and I still watch episodes whenever I can. It was a massive influence on my life! The whole “cafe culture” was a big influence on me and now, to me, cafes are my favorite’s places to go, chill out, and write my books! 🙂 Not only that but the humor in the show is massive influence on me and I still use some of the jokes from the show with my friends! (shhhhhhh…coz they don’t know that! :D)

Have you ever seen someone do something, which you thought was cool, and then you ended up copying them? 😎

I got home from a long drive yesterday and I was in a great mood, I felt alive and positive as I had just been to the coast on a wonderful date 😎 and we had a lovely relaxing evening. When I got home, I switched on the TV and as film was on called, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. Now some people are inevitably going to fans of horror movies but I saw just 10 minutes and I truly started to feel depressed and it brought my entire mood down! Now I’m not saying that it will have or has the same effect on everyone but what I am saying there is a level of influence going on, whether you feel it or not. Imagine if that’s the kind of input you get on a regular basis!!

I’m not a parent yet but in working with children frequently, I know how much kids to get influenced by all the things going on around. I’m already planning, that as a future parent, I know I will not be able to control what my child is exposed to, I can however the greater influence to my child through using all the tools I learned over the years on personal development, especially tools such as NLP, EFT, etc. They will inevitably be bombarded with things from all circles but the way I see my role is to spend as much time with them, as possible and find ways of getting them to respond to me. The great thing is that I’m slowly building those skills and gaining experience all the time!

But it’s not just children that get influenced…whether we admit to ourselves and realise it or not, I know for a fact that If I spend the next two weeks, just submitting myself to the couch and doing nothing but watching TV then of course I’m going to be influenced on some level!

Take for example advertisers; their whole profession is based on influence. They will find ways of selling their products to us, in just a few seconds with minimal effort and we will be none the wiser. They will implant suggestions within us, to get instant brand recognition through a particular piece of music for example. So as soon as you hear that piece of music, it will then trigger the thought of that product.

So this gives you an Idea of the EIS side of the things. Now onto the IIS Now in essence, this is about input and self talk. Input is very important, what you allow into your mind will go in some degree go towards what goes on in your mind. The input is EIS but contributes to the IIS. It works both ways but we’re going to focus primarily on this way around. Over the period of this year, I’ve slashed the amount of T.V. that I watch. I watch it in very small doses and when I do watch it, it’s generally very light comedies like Friends, Family Guy, Scrubs, those sorts of shows. Things that will make me laugh or programs that will educate me Like the Discovery Channel, Wildlife Shows, or programs about health like, Diet Doctors, or You Are What You Eat.

In addition to that, whenever I do housework, I listen to some audio books, the type of books that will inspire and give some useful knowledge that I can apply in my life, like books by Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins, etc and anything along those lines that give me life skills that I can take away with to me to positively influence my life. Since I’ve been following this routine I’ve noticed a massive change in my life, it’s by no means perfect, but I have more energy, I feel excited about life, I am positive, I feel enthusiastic and my thoughts are much more clear and focused. And so what this whole process is doing is using the best EIS’s that I can find and using those to change my IIS’s. The process of influence will always continue, I will still see commercials, watch TV, listen to music, be in circles of people with influence, etc.

What this has shown me is that I have a responsibility to myself to look carefully at all the EIS’s around me and know what impact they’re having on my experience of life. Through that awareness, I can then make wiser decisions about the EIS’s and in turn affect the IIS’s so that I’m giving my soul the good fruit and not the junk food. I know that I will supervise the majority of what I let inside me and hence what will influence me the most.

So look closely around you, what are you greatest spheres of influence, are they EIS’s or IIS’s?