What Influences You?

Even before I start writing any further, let me tell you this one is inspired by one of Dan’s blog posts (one of my blog group friends), so in a way I am dedicating this one to him. Dan, you deserve this. Well, in his post, Dan talked about LinkedIn invitation for subscribing to some top influencers which he ignored and also some of the offers to “Go Pro” which he rejected. To be honest, I am not a people’s man. You don’t see me attending parties, social gatherings, functions, or any local events. I am living in my own world. As rightly pointed out by one of my friends, I am a “kuaa no dedko”. Now, that is a local Gujarati phrase which means “a frog who lives in a well”. I am not bothered about my neighbors, my society people or anything else.

However, that does not mean I am not influenced by people. In fact, I am a distant observer. I don’t talk to you, I don’t “hello” you, but I still see you, observe you and I collect information about you through what others speak about you. I cannot really say how and when this thing hit me, but I guess I can at least say that it was mainly after I joined Elphinstone College that I got hit by this wave of knowledge and certain people that changed me into what I am. Of course, my mother has influenced me a lot. I still do things that she taught me when I was too young to differentiate between right and wrong, but there are others and other things that has influenced me and made me what I am.

I agree with Dan’s idea that there cannot be certain set of people that can influence you because you can influenced by millions of things around you, not just human beings. For instance, after I took Sociology, my perception of life in India has changed completely. Similarly, I am influenced by many people that I don’t speak to. It can be just anybody, even a stranger sitting next to me in the train. I don’t have to be friend with him or her. Similarly, I know many of my friends who are influenced by me. I feel this quite strange that someone can get inspired from my acts and my decisions, but I have seen that happening. Honestly, I sometimes feel awkward that someone should follow what I am doing, but the truth is they do. I get influenced by movies, I get influenced by poems, by songs, by inspirational quotes that I see on some poster or on computer wallpapers. It’s a feeling of realization and it has an effect on your character from that very moment.

In fact, if anybody of LinkedIn is reading this, I would like to tell that even those top influencers whom they put into that slot are influenced by common people like us. To be brutally honest, these top influencers might be paid users that are using LinkedIn services and probably that’s why the company is putting their profile in such slots. How do you know that these set of guys are going to have some potential influence on my mind? Only because they are holding higher positions or they are in the same field as me? Influence, as rightly pointed out by Dan is not just an exclusive set of people because then you are just limiting yourself and how you think. If you really want to be influenced you have to focus on everything around you and not just people. Sometimes, even hard time and complex relationships can influence the way you think and understand life. It is all about how you perceive and take things in stride as you continue your journey of life.