Your Best and Worst Influence – a two-minute social thought experiment

A simple 2-minute social thought experiment for you:

Note: I highly recommend that you don’t just read this list of steps, but instead, that you actually do them! Reading these steps will not give you any benefit, but doing them might!

Step 1 – Think for a moment about the person who is the best influence on you, or the person in your life you don’t see that much that you most admire the traits or actions of.

Step 2 – Visualize something great this person did or said, or think of a trait of theirs you admire.

Step 3 – Ask yourself: are you sure you don’t want to make an effort to spend more time with this person than you do now? Consider sending them a message now to make plans to see them.

Step 4 – Think for a moment about the person who is the worst influence on you, or the person in your life that you see regularly whose actions or personality you least respect.

Step 5 – Visualize something distasteful this person did or said, or think of a trait of theirs that you don’t respect.

Step 6 – Ask yourself: are you sure you want to spend as much time with this person as you have been spending?

It’s as accurate as it is cliché: your choice of who to spend time with shapes what sort of person you become and what you value.