Influence

All of us have people in our lives that have made a difference… our parents, our spouses, our kids are just some of them. Friends, co-workers, teachers, mentors, leaders, and others join the list. Some of these people are individuals we met in childhood; others are persons who have made a difference in our adult years.

Some of them have helped form us into the person we are… and sometimes, we’ve become the person we are, despite their best efforts to make us better.

Each of them, man, woman, or child, has had an effect on us… they’ve helped us define who we became. Some of them have made major differences in our life… we would have chosen a different path without them, or perhaps our lives would have been vast wastelands of despair if they didn’t come into our lives, and change those lives for the better.

It just goes to show you what a difference one person can make. I’m sure you can all remember someone who made such a difference in your life that there was a marked difference in the “before” and “after” you, just as if you’d been a set of photographs in one of those ads in the back of some magazine.

We need to find more of those people, of course, but more than that, we need to concentrate on being that kind of person in the life of someone else. I’ve had teachers who have changed my viewpoint of life, and I’ve tried, in turn, to give someone else something that helps them in a time of distress. I’ve been comforted by others, and have tried to comfort them. I’ve been helped through life by the ideas of other people, and have tried to help someone else in turn.

We need to help other people, as we were once helped ourselves.

If, in your life, you made a positive difference to one person… just one person… then your life could be said to be a success. If you helped one person from loneliness, or stopped someone from looking toward suicide, or helped someone from making a stupid mistake that would disrupt their life… your contribution is one of significance.

But the true leaders and mentors never seem to help just one person… they go through life helping a multitude of individuals. Those “helped” individuals then help others, and those help others, and so on. Eventually, the contributions that have been made by that one caring person wind long beyond the solitary instance where they spoke up and helped someone else.

Like a pyramid scheme in reverse, the one person who helps someone else winds up influencing the lives of many, many other people, and the effect of their assistance is far greater than the number of people who will turn up to honor them at their funeral.

It’s our challenge in life to help define those turning points for the people we interact with, helping them (and us) to become better. We, too, can help provide those interactions that make people better. We can inspire others and help them become better… and as a side effect, help our own lives become better.

I have been blessed in my life to have met some amazing people who have impacted my life a great deal. Thank you for that. Let’s hope we all can make a positive difference in the lives of the people we meet.