I heard something interesting today as I was listening to Darren Hardy’s, The Compound Effect (I actually hear a bunch of interesting things every time I listen to this book). He was talking about influences in our lives and how most of us walk around at the mercy of these influences. The people we hang out with at work, home, and other social occasions are shaping who we are. It seems obvious when you think about it. Listening to that overly negative person at work makes you grumpy. Or being around that person who is always smiling and has something nice to say makes you smile.
So there seems to be two things that are important here. The first is to be aware of who you are around most of the time and what kind of influence they are on you. The second would be to self-reflect; what kind of an influence am I? Crap. I want to be a good influence on people but I know myself and I can sometimes be fairly, how do you say, standoffish? I like to sit and think about things but that doesn’t always go over well when other people are around. So I have tried over the last while (or long while to varying degrees of success) to act how I want to feel around other people (I got that nugget from Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project). It works in my mind and I guess I will have to ask around if I am right.
One more thing, Kimberley (wife of me) was telling me today about how much tv people will end up watching when they retire. The formula of 40 40 40 has commonly been applied to one’s working life. We work for 40 hours a week for 40 years and end up retiring with 40% of our pay. That seems a little depressing but numbers often are. What is shockingly depressing is that a new ’40’ has emerged and that is how many hours a retired person spends watching tv or something on a screen. Talk about influences. Are we letting tv influence us to the point where it is all we look forward to in retirement? It must be the machines slowly putting us into the Matrix. I hope Keanu is around when it happens.
