Be the ‘influencer’ in your own life – how to
The term influencer has become popularized during the current social media age to mean a person who has a devoted following that commercial brands desire to capitalize on to get their products and services in front of receptive audiences for what appears as seamless exposure that is more effective than traditional advertising.
This term has its apt roots dating back to the 1600’s, being used broadly to refer to someone or something with the power to alter the beliefs of individuals resulting in impacting the course of events. Pay close attention to that last sentence as it is what this liberating discourse you are reading hinges on.
Whether that term is used in professional contemporary parlance or not, you are always participating in one side or the other on the two sides that is influence. You are either influencing or you are being influenced. What side of the “influence ledger” you are on determines your fate. Understanding what gives you the leverage to determine whether you are an influencer or the influenced is the key to that choice.
Most in the world are influenced; they take their cues from the phenomenon of general exposure. Conventional assumptions, statistics, headlines, popular ideologies, etc. When one is in the constant relationship of being influenced by conditions (history, your past, ‘climates’, conventional perceptions and consensus) you lead a largely reactive life. Decisions are made from reacting rather than intentionally deciding (don’t be fooled, most of our decisions typically stem from reaction).
This reactionary living causes you to be at the mercy of whatever your prevalent influences are. Many are influenced by judgment – one’s own self-judgment or others. Others are influenced by their fears and decisions are largely made from fear. Fear of abandonment, fear of lack, fear of loneliness, fear of ill health, fear of failure, fear of the past.
If one remains on the merry-go-round of being influenced one becomes – attitude notwithstanding – a victim. A victim of past mistakes, a victim of trauma experienced, a victim of unrelenting self or others’ judgments, a victim of circumstance. This is no way to emerge as a thriver in one’s life because life then is consumed with one’s reacting as a gauge of worth.
On the other liberating hand, the key to living as an influencer that impresses on conditions from their influencing – rather than absorb the conditions of being influenced – is understanding what I call the “set-up” that fundamentally renders you immune to defaulting to the influenced identity.
The set-up is recognizing and accepting your non-programmed nature. To a degree, as a functioning human being you operate via programming, however beyond the programing that serves functioning, you need not be influenced by the programming that sabotages.
Your inherent nature is not programmed to suffer or experience any fundamental constriction. All suffering comes from the absorption, knowingly or unknowingly, of the influence of programming. But once you “age into” your autonomy (typically at the programmed age of 18). With conscious awareness – which can occur at 18 or 80 – you can decide whether you will be an influencer or the influenced.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with a “personality type” – you are not attempting (therapeutically speaking) to influence others, so what is perceived of as an influential or convincing personality is not at issue here. You can use the key of understanding your true nature (that’s why it is coined, “nature” – it is what is natural before or sans programming!) and recognize that you can influence your life regardless of personality type over being influenced by sabotaging programming.
As you “reverse the feedback loop” – you influence from your acceptance of your fundamental, natural nature rather than receiving all cues as to the nature of life from what has already been influenced, you become your own salvation. You liberate yourself from the suffering of suffering.
The suffering of fear, the suffering of lack, the suffering of incompatibility, the suffering of boredom, the suffering of confusion, the suffering of low self-esteem, the suffering of self-judgment, the suffering from various forms of pain.
You are not your programming; you are the means of releasing its influence. Not battling it, debating it, coercing it or suppressing it, but releasing it through the accepted awareness of your natural nature. Its not rocket science; its deprogramming from the programming in whatever way it has induced suffering and sabotage.
Be your own salvation – through thoughtful support however that materializes, but from your own decision to be the influencer of your life.
