There are people out there with intentions that don't have your best interest at heart, people who are going to try to influence you in negative ways that will be far from productive for your life. They'll pop up constantly and the longer you let them stick around the harder it will be to get rid of them and their influence. They're not always bad people but for you they're parasites. They'll try convincing you to stray from your path or just plain pushing you out of the way of opportunity, and because during every social encounter someone is either selling or being sold you must be absolutely sold on yourself and your values. No matter what happens or what mistakes you make, you must always close yourself on you and never allow anyone to close you on anything that contradicts that.
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| Close yourself on you every day |
When I first started in the automobile industry selling new and used vehicles I worked at a decently sized dealership with about six other sales guys. I remember one in particular who began hovering around me when I got done devouring the mandatory sales training and product information. Coincidentally enough he was a person I'd seen briefly when I first came to interview with the sales manager and something about him was just off to me - he was someone I disliked instantly. Could have been the nicest guy in the world deep down, but everything about him just oozed crook. Poor, overly defensive body language. Hunching. The usual. Not my concern however because as a salesperson I wasn't there to make friends, I was there to sell cars. At least, it didn't matter to me until he started trying to snipe my deals and treat me like a naive green pea. He learned in hurry that I wasn't having it, and short of physical confrontation it took a few instances of me shutting him down for him to realize I wasn't about to be railroaded or taken advantage of. He interfered with one deal and that was the end of that.
These leeches can be found in any company or industry, though, not just auto sales. It's the guy who's an average to below average worker and focuses most of his attention on finding ways to get out of having to buckle down and do some damn work. They do this by subtly influencing people and things around them and even blatantly influencing other workers, using deception and deceit to get credit where credit is not due. I've seen salespeople lose their job by allowing themselves to be negatively influenced in the workplace. Allowing rumors to affect their behavior, letting people gently push them out of the way of an impending sale, or letting guilt prevent them from truly squeezing out every last ounce of potential from themselves. It's tragic.
The sooner we realize the scope of influence we have as individuals, the quicker we see what constant power struggles go on throughout a given day. Underneath the surface of the average persons life are forces ebbing and flowing, applying pressure to push circumstances one way or another, while allowing outside factors to affect the undercurrent of a vastly complex social dynamic. We live and breathe each other - our networks are vast and very much so alive. As a species we've thrived, not by being the most physically dominant race, but by becoming the most omniscient species. We're very aware of ourselves and the influence we can have on the world around us.
You're level of influence on your own life and those around you is always rising or falling. When you choose to remain quiet about an issue of importance to you because you fear rejection, you're being influenced. When you compromise a core value to accommodate another person. When you refuse to look into a situation going on at work and just assume it's "normal", you're being influenced. Negatively.
Positive influences do exist in the world and you've got to seek those out but the harsh reality is that we're living in a world overflowing with negativity; in the media, at the water cooler, from your parents, etc. The more keenly aware you are of what's going inside of your mind the better, whether you're picking up a book at Barnes & Noble or choosing to follow someone on Twitter, ask yourself, "What kind of input would this be for me?" You have a choice over a whole lot of the inputs that go inside of your mind, so choose wisely. That 4 hours of television you watch every weekend probably isn't the best of inputs, nor the conversations you have with your co-worker on coffee break about how horrible the stock market is and how fast our economy is tanking. This is all useless drivel you don't need and you ultimately don't want affecting you on a deeper level, which it surely will. Make it a daily goal to cut out as many negative inputs as you possibly can and to seek out as many positives ones as you're able to and you'll be one step closer to regaining the majority vote for influence in your life.
