Influencers - Do You Have The Guts
Learn to level up your online environment so you are choosing your influences. Have you ever thought about changing your world by changing some of the noise happening around you? As we begin to choose our influences, we have a new and important opportunity to intentionally change the way we behave, react, or feel. That’s today’s topic - the choice we sometimes don’t know we have!
2 Life Experiences with Influencers and Influences
I have two really profound personal experiences with leveling up my influences and influencers that I’m sharing today. I am sharing a past experience and a recent experience where just how influenced I am really came to light for me.
The weekend before Thanksgiving I attended a conference led by Brooke Castillo who is an incredible life coach. The entire event was full of entrepreneuers and people on fire to level up their game in life and / or in business. The energy of the attendees and the big thinking created the most dazzling experience. I was influenced positively all weekend long!
What is so stunning about this whole experience to me though…is that I chose this influence. When I began choosing my influences and influencers, I just wanted to steer clear of the negativity. That was my main goal. It is so amazing that the simple choice of what I am pouring in has made such a profound impact on my everyday life and how I envision my future. If I had kept all of my old faves intact, I don’t think I’d have had the emotional capacity to grow. I spent a lot of time in other’s energy and focused on what was all around me, vs focusing on myself, what I could improve, what I could change…
I am even investing in my influences at this point. Isn’t that a wild thought when you think it intentionally? It seems so crazy, but doesn’t it make REAL sense?
And these days, with all of this awareness around what’s influencing me, and the different choices I am able to make…I rarely allow my environment to influence me. I no longer bounce from feeling to feeling based on my environment. So choosing my influences wisely has taken me to new levels of thinking and ways of being.
Weeding Out the Extra & Unnecessary influences
This sesh is not about hiding from the truth of what’s happening, but it is about weeding out the unnecessary extra that is not serving us and replacing it with good stuff that does serve us.
My second example is back from 2020. I was tuning into an amazing little Facebook Group that was very, very uplifting. Crave is a group run by a few friends of mine and they shared lessons each week - lessons that often knocked my socks off. If you subscribe to the group and scroll down to April 2020, you will find Katy and her sister talking all about influencers in our lives - and that was the flame that ignited my entire shift in what was/is influencing my life.
The begin discussing the idea of choosing our influencers and it was just one of those AHA moments where you think…
‘Why on earth haven’t I done that?’
They schooled me on how to with social media. People on social media can’t really tell when you unfollow them and that it does not matter anyway. Ditch the negative vibe to keep thoughts in a good place. So I took them to heart and I went to town unfollowing, unsubscribing, and choosing good stuff to show up in my feed. I learned how to log on and go directly to a group without checking my feed…The whole experience was liberating. I felt so good about it and how I was helping myself out.
As I watched their episode it became crystal clear to me that I have the most influence over me. I choose what goes in - it does’t have to be default. So I took tiny actions over and over that yielded an entire new outlook for me.
A few things I changed I will share because the way these particular things were influencing me was so surprising.
First Shift
I gave up Real Housewives of Everything. I started out slow by not tuning into the new/next season and letting go of one group of housewives at a time. I eventually even gave up cable and my recording device. I counted it up once and I was watching 13+ hours of prime time tv every week…and it occurred to me I was choosing all those influences. And the influences were not serving me well. I also confess that I had one of my biggest personal aha moments watching Don’t Be Tardy for The Party…so you’ll have to keep tuning in to hear what that was…hahaha. Maybe I’ll write about it and share that here. however, 1 win from 1 episode in hundreds of hours watched didn’t make me feel great.
I gave them up because of the influence they wreaked. I was not one to sit and watch unless I had a glass of wine or two - because they did too. It just seemed normal to drink from dawn until dusk when watching them do it like it was real life…
Second Shift
I gave up certain books and authors and sought out new topics and new kinds of characters because well, I read a lot. If the characters I am pouring into my routines skip workouts, drink lots of coffee and wine, I am somewhat doomed. The ok of their standards begins to bleed into my thinking.
Isn’t that wild? I had to stop and ask myself more than once why I wanted cake or coffee, or a glass of wine with everything when I wanted the exact opposite. Clean living and water!
What about Your shift?
Have you thought about influences you ARE choosing and how they are governing your patterns in life? For me, things I pour in that are about food, alcohol, and general mindset have to meet a certain standard or I don’t watch, listen or focus upon it. The news is a tough one but my main standard on the news is not to pour it in in any form of a non stop cycle. News needs a beginning and an end time.
I’d like to share the idea that giving things up often feels like a sacrifice and it scares us away from our potential because of how we are framing it or thinking about it. What if giving up a certain point of view or a certain influence in your life allowed you transformation? Weight loss? Joyful thoughts? Cultivated choices. Strong actions?
3 (or 4) Tiny Steps to Move Forward in Cultivating Your Own Influencers
You are in charge of what is coming into your mind. Upgrade your feed. Anyone or anything that makes you feel inadequate, jealous, or angry has to go. Unfollow or hide them. This goes for all of your platforms.
Turn off all notifications on all devices. This way you choose when to allow your day/time to be interrupted by the voice of social feed. Your influencers are by invite only
Everyone knows to limit news intake, right?
Last but not least, begin building your own community of influencers as you weed things our of your everyday life. Take seriously what/who you allow into your brain space. And this goes beyond social media. What books, podcasts, and tv programs are you taking in? In what way are they serving you? If they just aren’t serving you- like me and the sweet housewives…do you have the guts to let them go. At least a little bit at a time?
Start by Starting
Start by starting. Decide. Take action. Once you begin one action, next steps fall into place. I remember going through my evening routine one night as I prepped for the next early morning work out. I was just going through my list and it occurred to me that I hadn’t had time for this routine 6 months prior. And I wondered why not…and I remembered how I used to spend my time, and the new things I’d begun pouring in like Atomic Habits by James Clear. Little action after little action led me right into a life of full blown cultivated choices that are changing the landscape of my life on a regular basis. What is so crazy is that my influences are now building me up 80%+ of the time. All because I took a little time, took a little better care of what I was pouring into me, and I chose to let go a little bit of what wasn’t serving me.
Do you have the guts to try leveling up all of your influences, and getting aware of what they are? Odds are it might require a little letting go that doesn’t come natural at first, but give it time. Letting go of a habit or something that doesn’t serve me is second nature these days.
