Daily Influence

Perceptions are not always right. Your personality or behavior can betray you - good and bad.  Unfortunately, oftentimes, Perception is Reality. 

Even a person with good character can be misperceived.  A direct person can be labeled rude or inpatient, and be of very high character.  A person who is friendly and amenable with everyone can be of low character. But perceptions can find us attracted to the friendly and put off by the direct. 

Your influence is part of the perception equation and why being responsible for our influence is so important for us individually.  

And never discount the power of context and the power it can have on clarity and perception.  

Your Character is the culmination of your behavior in all aspects and is generally measured by your influence on self and others.  

How we communicate and how we perceive others' communication can be influenced by our character.  

We discuss the differences between personality and character, and how  these can be confused and lead to pitfalls and/or opportunity.  

Measuring character takes time; measuring personality can be immediate. 

Honesty is a character trait that requires self-respect and respect of others. 

Your character can be called into question just by the company you keep or the profession you are in, which is not always fair. 

We can spend a lifetime building our character and destroy it in an instant with a single act.

We all have habits - good and bad.  Habits are those automatic actions we have as humans that can oftentimes define part of us.  

Creating and overcoming habits is the discussion today and we dive into the different kinds of habits and how to better understand our own habits and those of others.  

Self-awareness comes from self-exploration and self-discovery.  As we always do, we urge you during any self-reflection that if you experience anxiety or negativity, you seek support from a licensed professional or close friend/confidant to help work through the issues causing the negativity.  

The goal of becoming self-aware is understanding where you're at today in your mind and accepting that our past is there for us to learn from, not define us.  

Be nonjudgmental about your past self and allow the awareness to help you mend.  Do not allow emotions to dictate how you communicate with yourself or others. Emotional self-communication can  be destructive if negative. Be mindful and be aware of those moments, so you can move to a learning and positive mindset.  

We recap the past eight episodes of The Daily Influence as we close out Who Am I? and move into discussing our individual Foundation.  

We began this segment of episodes after our Focus section, and dove right into our Ego.  Ego is uniquely human and it can be an advantage or a detriment. Episode 18 is one you may want to listen to again and again.  

Episode 19 - Self-Reflection took us on a journey of self and the challenges we face and opportunities we create when looking in the mirror.  

Episode 20 - Roots is where we landed when that look in the mirror got deeper.  Our roots don't define us. It provides us with the start of our ever evolving foundation, which is the title of our next section.  

Episode 21 - Who Do You Want To Be? is a dive into your purpose, or discovering what your potential purpose may be.  Who are you today compared to who you want to be now or in the future. 

Episode 22 was a discussion about commitment that I used my 31st wedding anniversary to launch from.  Part of who we are is the accumulation of all our journeys that include different anniversary celebrations.  

Episode 23 is a dive into the human tendency to be self-deceptive and how self-deception is a pitfall that almost never leads to opportunity or advantages.  

Episode 24 - We discuss our intuition and how it's formed from our experience. And the more we slow down and engage in the present, the louder our intuition can be in support of our present and future. 

Episode 25 - Clarity is what we seek. And when we have clarity, we are in a place where our opportunities are best taken advantage of.  

After today we move onto our Foundation and how to engage with our foundation to create our best self for us and others.  

Getting clarity in your life will require using the tools we have been discussing for the past 24 episodes.  Slowing down and gaining focus about our individual influence and that which influences us will help to bring clarity to our lives. 

We can begin to or understand fully what our purpose is as an individual. And yes, we each have a purpose and we each matter.  

Using the new understanding (clarity) in our lives will help us to have better individual positive influence and be our best self for us and for those in our lives. 

Believe it or not, we all have intuition.  I like to call it our minds' roadsign to opportunity and challenges.  

When your mind offers up something that is often perceived as Intuition, slow down and pay attention.  

If you look back at your individual experience with intuition, you may find a pattern that develops that can be learned from and can be used to help you be your best self in the future.  

We all lie to ourselves. Most of the time, they are white lies.  However, self-deception and self-justification can impede our understanding of who we are and can get in the way of opportunity and understanding of what may negatively influence us.  

Today is my 31st wedding anniversary, I'm reflecting on how this has influenced who I am!

Part of discovering who you are is discovering who you want to be.  Don't let physical attributes – looks, cars, clothes, jobs - define who you want to be.  

Perception of how you want to be seen will be influenced by who you want to be. Use this as a tool. 

We all have influence and are influenced. Understanding this influence will help us understand who we want to be.