Even more interestingly, unlike our attempts to control, our attempts to influence don't require our conscious intent. Which is why our ability to influence others is so much more important that our ability to control them: we're always exerting influence simply by being who we are, saying what we say, and doing what we do. The only real choice we have in the matter is whether or not the influence we exert is good or bad.
BECOMING A GOOD INFLUENCE
You never know who's watching you. And someone always is, whether your child, your sibling, your spouse, your friend, or a stranger in another car on the road. Emotions and inner life states are transmitted like viruses along the vectors of our words and actions, even from the quietest and smallest. Nothing can encourage us like someone else's good example. They're frankly few and far between—but they're there if you look for them. Want to create value with your life? Become a good influence.Stop and think. What better service can you provide someone else besides being a good example to them? Not with conscious intention, which always seems contrived and has little power to encourage, but by simply (oh, ironic word) becoming the examples you yourself want to see. As I wrote in a previous post, How To Communicate With Your Life, when you've actually become something, others see it in almost everything you do.
AVOIDING BAD INFLUENCES
Life is a constant battle to maintain a high life-condition. In medical school, we were taught that one way to recognize a patient is depressed is by examining our own mood once we've finished interacting with them. If we feel depressed ourselves, a good chance exists they are, too. A principle of Nichiren Buddhism—the oneness of life and its environment—addresses this phenomenon: our own inner life state finds itself mirrored in and mirrored by our environment. In other words, everyone's life-condition tends towards the average of those around them. If I'm up and you're down, we'll each tend to pull one another toward our own inner states, usually both moving toward the mean between them. Some people have exceptionally resilient life-conditions that are like rigid magnets, pulling others up (or down) powerfully without tending to move much themselves under the influence of the life-conditions of others. While we may all aspire to possess that strength (to the positive, obviously), most of us haven't achieved it.Others are still able to pull out of most of us varying positive or negative characteristics. Our children may pull out wise protectors or fed-up disciplinarians. Our co-workers may pull out inspiring leaders or complaining gossips. Some people are simply toxic, complaining constantly, gossiping mercilessly, even purposely sabotaging others. On days we're strong enough not only to avoid being pulled into similar patterns of behavior but also help them avoid such negative behaviors as well, we can serve as good influences over them. On days we're weaker ourselves and therefore more susceptible to negative influences, we should avoid such people as best we can. It's quite easy when we're feeling low to spiral even lower under the influence of someone else's negativity.
CONVERTING BAD INFLUENCES INTO GOOD ONES
This is what we all really want to do, both for ourselves and others. The more good influences with which we surround ourselves, the happier we'll be; the more people we "convert" into good influences (by our own good influence), the more value we will have created, which will also add to our happiness. Yet converting someone from a bad influence into a good one is among the hardest of tasks: changing someone's basic approach to life from negative to positive isn't likely something any one person has the power to do. At least, not consistently. The only way, it seems to me, to turn a bad influence into a good one is by consistently being a powerful good influence yourself. Which, of course, requires you to challenge your own negativity and constantly win over it, and that is the hardest of tasks.And also the most worthwhile. I can think of no better epitaph than "He helped others to better themselves." If that's what they end up saying about me, I will have been able to consider my life a success. It's certainly what I'm going to say about my dad.