How To Influence People (Don't Read If You're A Cult Leader)

"Holy Tequila! I have become my mother", I mutter as I realise what I've just done. I lost my temper with my son for the exact same reason my mom would lose her temper with me: a completely age-appropriate lack of energy and motivation. Some days, his slouch is so pronounced, I can hear it yawning and blinking its eyes. Sometimes, it hums.

Then again, much like me at that age, my son is a very cooperative teenager. He will do what I tell him to do. I just have to tell him EVERY little thing. As long as I keep telling, he keeps doing. When I stop telling him, he stops doing. It's infuriating, but it could be worse, I remind myself as I tell him to please "also put the cups and plates on the other side of the kitchen counter into the dishwasher".

He could be rebellious or, even worse, a prick. He isn't and my liver (ah, Tequila!) and I thank the patron saint of hangovers cured and solidified for that every day.

Much like my mother's influence over me never lasted for more than an hour, the direct influence I have over my son is extremely limited. So is my influence over other people in this world. Sure, I can tell them what to do and, much like my son, sometimes they listen and sometimes they don't.

Nevertheless, telling people what to do is not a sustainable way to change people's behaviour because when the telling stops, the change also stops.

If telling someone what to do was all it took to get lasting results, we'd all be much more relaxed parents, teachers, bosses, and Starbucks patrons. We wouldn't need public health campaigns or legal systems with consequences. We wouldn't need more than one parent-teacher conference in our lifetime and we certainly wouldn't need to have our Grande, Iced, Sugar-Free, Vanilla Latte With Soy Milk re-done. Ever.

"So, if our influence is that limited, why bother?"

Well, I am glad you asked. You see, there is one person in this world you DO have more influence over than I do over my teenage son (unless you are a cult leader with devoted cultists, in which case you have a ton of influence, but should probably re-think that whole gig since cults have this way of going EXTREMELY wrong for the people in them...).

The one person you have some meaningful influence over is, drum-roll, you guessed it, yourself.

Influence. Not control, mind you. If you had control over yourself, you wouldn't need a diet, an exercise buddy, or ever more elaborate ways of tricking yourself into doing the laundry and cleaning the fridge.

But even with a messy fridge, the truth is that you can still change yourself much more easily than you can change other people.

That makes you the perfect target for your ambitions to improve the world, the people in it, and the way cheese is distributed among your family members who all seem to be vying for your favourite parmesan.

Luckily—or unluckily, depending on how much you use your self-influence—children take their cues from what their parents do, not from what their parents say.

Much to my chagrin and deeply fascinated horror, I do as my mom did, not as my mom said. My son, bless his little gamer heart, is much the same, although I have managed to instil in him a better taste in video games than I had at his age.

Like children, most people take their cues from the other people around them. They will do as you do, not as you say.

So if you want to change the way people behave, do more. Say less.

Get better at your own stuff, be truly excellent to people, and then hope for the best.

Chances are, your actions will be much more contagious than your words (except, of course, if you ARE a cult leader...)