Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 498 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

The Influence of Others – Attitude

Thank you for joining us for our 5 days per week wisdom and legacy podcast. This is Day 498 of our trek, and today is Philosophy Friday. Every Friday we ponder some of the basic truths and mysteries of life and how they can impact us in creating our living legacy.

Currently, we are in a multi-week trek as we explore the teachings from some of my virtual mentors, such as Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, and Earl Nightingale. The core of our current trek is based primarily on Jim Rohn’s book called The Five Major Pieces to the Life Puzzle. I have learned a considerable amount from reading and re-reading this book on my own trek of life, and I trust that it will benefit you also. Keeping with the continuity of Wisdom-Trek, I will be adapting it to The Five Trails on Life’s Trek.

We are broadcasting from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. It has been a rather cold week as winter weather begins to set in. We are thankful for a warm office with a beautiful view to work from.

On last Friday’s trek, we ended with three questions about how those you associate with impact your attitude and your life. Today’s trek on the Attitude Trail will explore those three questions in more detail. If you have missed the past few Philosophy Friday treks, it would be good to go back and review them to get caught up on our progress so far. We have a lot of ground to cover today, so let’s break camp and continue on the second trail of this extended trek as we cover…

The Five Trails on Life’s Trek – Attitude Part 6

As a reminder, our overall extended trek will cover these five trails:

1. Philosophy

2. Attitude

3. Activity

4. Results

5. Lifestyle

How You Feel Is Influenced By Your Associations

1. Who are you around?

It is good to invest some time once in a while analyzing the people who touch your lives on a daily basis and to mentally weigh the effect the members of your inner circle might be having on you. What reputation do they have with those who are productive, knowledgeable, and respected? What is the level of their own past accomplishments? What is the depth of their knowledge? Do they understand the value and importance of attitude, goals, and personal development? How many books have they read in the past year? Are they studying and developing new skills to refine their current abilities? How do they look upon the value of virtues such as integrity, commitment, persistence, fairness, patience, and diligent activity? What is it about them that makes their advice, opinions, and counsel valuable?

Hopefully, your inner circle does not consist of people whose strongest assets are an unlimited supply of jokes and a variety of distorted opinions. Those who can reach you and affect you on a daily basis should inspire you, not spread the seeds of doubt and dissent with their pessimism, complaining, and ridicule of others. Maintaining a positive attitude in the face of life’s challenges is difficult enough without this kind of influence in your lives.

2. What affect are they having?

That’s a legitimate question. Where do they have you going? How do they have you talking? What do they have you thinking, reading, and doing? What influence do they have on your ability to perform well and to grow? Do they inspire you to feel good about what you are doing? Most important of all, what do they have you becoming?

It is easy to let the wrong people slip into your lives. That is why you must take a close look at your circle of influence. You must frequently assure yourself that the wrong voices of influence have not invaded your garden of opportunity by sowing seeds of negativity and doubt.

Delicate as this subject may be, you have probably accumulated a few close friends whose attitudes and habits are damaging to your chances of success and happiness. They may be nice people, with the best intentions, but their affect is wrong. If so, then you may have to make some difficult choices. To protect yourself from the wrong influences, you may be forced to walk away from people you have known for many years to develop more positive and motivating friendships. This does not imply that you have to abandon them completely, but it is important to limit the time you invest in them, especially if they have a negative influence on you.

3. Is that acceptable?

Re-evaluating your associations can be a difficult issue. Progress is often painful, but so are the consequences of allowing other people to exercise undue influence upon you.

Sometimes it is helpful to remember that it is not just your attitude that you are attempting to protect and nurture, but the future well-being of others as well. If you are strong, you can help others to change and to improve their lives. If you are not, then the influence of certain people can make your own progress difficult, if not impossible.

To protect your better future, you must have the courage to disassociate whenever necessary. That may not be an easy choice, but it may be a necessary one. All of us become careless on occasion, and the wrong people, the wrong opportunity, or the wrong thoughts can find their way into your life. The key is to learn to recognize the effect and to take the necessary steps to minimize or eliminate the source.

Although we are to be kind and loving to all people, the amount of time that you allow them to influence you may need to be minimized. Why take such drastic action? Because the negative influence is too powerful and too threatening. Never underestimate the power of influence. The reason why influence is so powerful is that it has the capacity to change you, and change can be difficult to reverse, particularly if it is change for the worse.

Like failure, influence is subtle. You would never allow someone to deliberately push you off the course you have set for yourself. A word of caution, though, if you are not careful you might inadvertently permit someone to nudge you in the wrong direction a little each day. They may be so effective at these nudges that you don’t even notice what is happening…until it is too late and the damage is done. You might even think the person who is doing the nudging is a friend, and they may be. It is important to understand their influence on you and how that will impact your life long term.

A nudge here, a nudge there, and as time passes, we soon find ourselves looking around and saying, “What am doing here? This is not where I meant to be!” You wind up investing weeks or months or even years merely trying to return to the course you thought you were on before your nudging friend came by, subtly destroying your future with the power of undue influence.

Disassociation is not something to be treated lightly. It must be done carefully and thoughtfully. If you are sincere about changing yourself and designing a better future, you are obligated to distance yourself from those who are having the wrong effect on you. The price of not doing it is simply too enormous. If those you associate with are unwilling or unable to change with the positive influence you can have on them, then you cannot risk being impacted in a negative manner.

^{This reminds me of the Scripture passage in Ephesians [4:17]-24 where the Apostle Paul encourages us to live as children of the light when he wrote,}

With the Lord’s authority I say this: Live no longer as the Gentiles do, for they are hopelessly confused. Their minds are full of darkness; they wander far from the life God gives because they have closed their minds and hardened their hearts against him.  They have no sense of shame. They live for lustful pleasure and eagerly practice every kind of impurity. But that isn’t what you learned about Christ.  Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.

We are deliberately taking our trek slowly on The Five Trails on Life’s Trek as we continue to hike on the Trail of Attitude. Today we learned how important it is to guard against the negative influences of others in our lives, even if they are related, or considered close friends.

Next Philosophy Friday we will continue to explore the value of who we associate with. Join us next Friday for additional insights. I know you will find these insights interesting and profitable in living a rich and satisfying life.

Our next trek will be Motivation Monday when we explore more trails of how to get and stay motivated to bring value to your world. So encourage your friends and family to join us, and then come along on Monday for another day of our Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.

If you would like to listen to any of the past daily treks, they are all available at Wisdom-Trek.com.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most of all your friend as I serve you through the Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal.

As we take this trek of life together, let us always:

1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
2. Love Unconditionally
3. Listen Intentionally
4. Learn Continuously
5. Lend to others Generously
6. Lead with Integrity
7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

This is Guthrie Chamberlain reminding you to Keep Moving Forward, Enjoy Your Journey, and Create a Great Day Every Day! See you on Monday!