How Our Influences Impact Our Lives | Journey Principles Podcast 015

Welcome to the Journey Principles, where we show you how to go from stuck to unstoppable with life strategies that work. Now, here's your host and creator of the Transform youm Framework, Stephen Scoggins.

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Journey Principles, sitting here today with Connor Kraft, director of Connections. As always coming to you not live, but recorded from the Journey Principles Institute here in Raleigh, North Carolina, otherwise known as the City of Oaks. You may be noticing I'm wearing my New York sweatshirt. Part of the reason I'm doing that today is just to represent one small sliver of one of the states that's majorly affected by the coronavirus. We've been very fortunate in North Carolina to date that we haven't had quite the outbreak some of the other places have. If you would like me to wear one of your sweaters on air to represent your state, feel free to smell us. 1. You can go to JourneyPrinciples.com look down at the footer and find our office address there. I'd be happy to do that. Represent your state and hopefully kind of give back to that. In the meantime.

He's a schmedium, by the way.

I'm a schmedium, yes. I'm. I'm five foot, nothing but a little bulkier than somebody that's probably my height otherwise.

But I appreciate you guys. We appreciate what you guys been going through and hope you guys are enjoying some of this content while you are staying at home. If you're watching this in 2020, and if not, we're going to go ahead and jump into the content for the day. Connor, what's our content homes?

So, so today we're going to talk about influences and one more.

One of my favorites.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, influences. When, when you shot the whiteboard lesson, which will actually go live tomorrow of this lesson, I was blown away by just the amount of content and value packed into it. And I had underestimated how powerful influences are until I really saw that. So I'm really excited to go and deeper into that today.

Yeah, no, I'm looking forward to it. It's one of the subjects I'm most passionate about because it's one of the things that I had to really reach for in my own personal transformation. It's one of the things that I had to keep going back to. In fact, some of you guys have seen right over Connor's left shoulder is a couple copies, several copies of my first book, the Journey 10 Simple Principles for a Life Journey that matters. And that's cute. In fact, if you ask a question on air, I'll autograph one and send you one for free. Hey, that's a guess. Yeah, we'll do that for sure.

The book did very well, obviously moved several thousand copies.

And you want a free book? Send a question about life mastery to questionsjourneyprinciples.com and if we end up using your question in any of our content and I'll personally autograph it, we'll even videotape if we got the question from you. We've already answered it. Then not so much. But yeah.

So what do you say? A gift for some, not for others?

Well, no, what I'm saying is that some people are going to write in questions that we already answered three weeks ago, but they didn't do their homework, so they don't know that.

Ah, okay.

So you're giving everyone credit.

Are you saying go back and watch all the content?

No, I'm just saying just make sure your question is unique.

He's saying pay attention is what he's saying. Or tay a pension, as I like to say. No, but seriously, what most people don't want to say is that book actually came out of my morning routine where I decided to ask, began to ask myself why my life at that time was my life at that time. I wanted to. I began. One of the first questions I ever asked myself was what is the difference? What is it? I'm sorry, I'm so used to telling Steve stories that I forgot to ask my own. What does it take to change the essence of a man? Was the question was a deep question that I asked myself. And I pulled my iPhone out at the time and I began typing and I ended up being on the treadmill for almost two hours.

And here's what you guys don't know. I have wonderful editors. Like, I have fantastic editors. And thank God for them because that two hour conversation that I had with myself in the iPhone was one giant run on sentence. Not a single comma, not a single capitalized letter, and not a single period. Okay? But it just goes to show, sometimes you have to do a mental, if you will, or verbal vomit. And I wish it was a better word to use, but that's essentially what happened. And one of the things I uncovered in doing so, I had about a four week time span where I would ask myself every morning one question and that became the Journey Principles book. Now, fortunately, the Journey Principles book has been edited so you don't have to worry about a giant run on sentence where I talk about 10 very specific principles, 10 very specific adversities that I personally faced. And one commonality that you'll see through about six of the chapters is influences. Wow. Right? There are.

I didn't even think about that when I was reading it and then listening to the audiobook, which I did two times. I obviously wasn't thinking about how that ties into some of the things you teach, but it makes sense.

Yeah. I mean, and it's, it's, you know, it's. It's how I got from the homelessness all the way to where I'm. I was at then for sure. And at. And at today, I'm still living by the same principles that I've been teaching. I've just added a bunch more to them. Right. So I'm trying to kind of dissect and give you the top seven principles for each of your eight pillars. I'm in the process of working on that now as we speak. But influences, Understanding influences is.

Pivotal. Not just good information, but pivotal and understanding who you are at your core, how you can improve upon that and how you're going to move forward.

So what is an influence? Let's define that.

Yeah. So an influence. Well, there's several. I'm going to go over. So I think there's five different influences that.

Five different types of.

Five different types of influences that pretty much make or break your self esteem and self worth. Okay. Okay. Now, an influence itself is something that inspires, encourages, or changes a behavior pattern inside of you. Inside of you.

Okay.

Okay. So what I mean by that is there are good influences that are mediocre influences and there are just straight up bad influences.

Right. So I guess bad influences would set you down a bad path in life.

Exactly.

Good influences are more likely to put you back on the straight narrow.

Exactly. And they say that, you know, there's a saying that says every acorn is an oak tree or can be an oak tree. Okay. Meaning an acorn is a seed. An oak tree at fully matured stage has a massive trunk, deep, deep roots, very, very strong resistance against.

Every oak tree was once an acorn.

Okay, exactly. Now, if you think about this, there have been oak trees that have fallen in the forest because of rot and decay. Okay. It's because the nourishment to the root itself was toxic. Right.

The root is like one of the most powerful parts of a tree.

Yeah, exactly. Right. So your personality, your person, you yourself. Okay. Are just like that oak tree. You have a definitive start and a potential outcome.

So like an oak tree Has a life cycle. And it starts out as just an acorn, and then it builds roots and then it sprouts.

Exactly.

You know, I'm not a scientist, so I don't know all the terminology here, but it grows leaves and branches and all that until it's a big oak tree.

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so if you think about yourself kind of in using oak tree philosophy. Okay, now I'm being a little figurative today, so thank you, Connor, for giving me some Runway here.

The very first influence that you've got to address and look at is what I like to call the parental influence. And that doesn't necessarily have to be a parent, meaning a mother or father. A parental influence is the person that play or the person or people that played the role of your parents in your upbringing.

Or does it matter?

In your whole life, in your upbringing. We're talking getting started. We're talking taking that acorn, turning it into a root system.

So when you say acorn, are you saying that the first influence type is the equivalent to the acorn in the story?

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, so if you look at your life like you are the oak tree and you start and the bottom of the tree is the acorn, which is basically before there was anything. This is the first influence, which is parental. Yep, got it. Okay, that makes sense.

So your parental influences have a very, very, very huge impact. Okay. In your starting point, right. The.

Better the influence. The better the start. The more difficult the influence, the more difficult to start.

So if you have really, really crappy parents who treat you like crap all the time, who make you feel like you're nothing, you're a lot less likely, unfortunate, like to achieve.

Well, there's more adversity in your way.

Okay. Yeah.

To have a healthy life and to break that kind of generation.

Whereas if you have fantastic parents, you're setting yourself up. Well, you're not setting yourself up.

You typically have a much starting. A much stronger starting point in the methods of self esteem, specifically.

Got it.

Okay.

But you're not. You're not. But even if you had a terrible parental upbringing, that doesn't mean that you're necessarily, like, screwed. Right?

Right, exactly. No, you're not screwed at all.

There's a lot of people who.

I had a. I had a very rocky or rollercoaster ish upbringing myself. A lot of inconsistencies. Okay. Different people raising me at different times, under different circumstances, under different situations, under different methodologies or modalities of their own emotional and spiritual and physical health.

So even if you have Some not so great influences in these areas. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're not going to be able to overcome that.

Oh, absolutely. In fact, I'm encouraging you the opposite because a lot of people think that their past, especially when generated by a difficult upbringing.

Okay, well, that's. It's common. Are completely derailed excuses that people make for why they can't be successful is where they came from.

Yeah. A lot of times I'll share the story of two sons on stage, but essentially the nutshell of that, no pun intended, with the oak tree there.

The two sons is they both had the same upbringing, the same influences. Right. The same stuff. One ended up an alcoholic and one ended up a multimillionaire living in New York. Oh, that's right.

I love that story.

Okay, so what I'm. That just goes to show.

Cool piece of content, by the way.

Yeah, I'm happy to do that. What it just goes to show is you are not destined to become a failure because of your start. Okay. Your start has nothing to do with your end. Okay. Now, you may have a more difficult road at overcoming certain things, but we're more than happy to make that road easier for you. Okay. Now, parental influences structure a few things inside of our DNA. Beliefs, values, forces of habits, how we feel about our internal significance, and the overall meaning that we place on all emotional or situational events in the future. Okay. So that's influence number one. Now, when I share that with you.

What are your first thoughts regarding parental. Yeah, well, I like how you tied the beliefs, the forces of habit, the significance, the meaning. I like how you tied specific kind of areas of your life or of basically the makeup of who you are. You tied that into where it comes from and listed it as parental influences. One of the things I like about this lesson, which I'm sure you'll continue with this trend, is each one of these influences kind of operates on a core part of you.

Yeah.

So your parental influences play a big part in your belief systems. Initially, your initial forces of habit, your initial significance and sense of meaning. But some of the later influences have to do with other areas, different choices that you make and things like that.

So influence number two is what's known as environmental. Okay. Now, environmental can mean a few different things. Geographic location and whether or not it's a. So when I say geographic location, I mean anywhere in the world of the country, place of birth, place you were a toddler or young adult.

Could be like if you grew up in the city versus the suburbs.

Exactly. City Suburbs, trailer park, ghetto, like that is an influence based on environment. In other words, certain types of talk, speech, and other things happen inside of those environments. So your environmental influences specifically address how you speak, your continued values development, which is worldview.

So like accents, things like that. It actually kind of makes sense to me how values would be. Would be kind of somewhat inherent there because there's cultural values, like if you go to Japan, there's typically a much greater sense of honor and loyalty and discipline is huge for a lot of. A lot of Japanese culture. And so I would imagine that even if you are not Japanese, Japanese, genetically, if you were raised in Japan, then you would adopt some of those values.

Yeah, exactly.

Cool. I just wanted to.

Yeah, so that's. That's part of it. And then the other thing is tendencies. Yes, so tendencies, Conflict resolution, stuff like that. So growing up in and out of trailer parks. Okay. Or in and out of seeing what trailer stuff. Nothing wrong with that, by the way. Absolutely nothing wrong. That's my starting point. Nothing wrong with that. But there are culturistic things that you mentioned of belief systems. For example, right. When I went out to go step out on faith to begin to create a business and create a better me, I got a lot of blowback from people who didn't want the same things or who didn't think it was possible. In the trailer park, in the trailer park areas. Okay. Now that could easily translate to the ghetto. It could easily translate to a shelter, Right? It could easily translate any impoverished, like, anything like that. Okay. Sometimes the most affluent environments also create a different skill set or different adversity because some people are so used to having their needs supplied in abundance that they now become entitled. So each of these different environments have a plus, a minus, and something you learn and grow from it. So one of the things as I go through all of these different five influences that I want everybody to memorize or think about is that each one of them can teach you something that you can use for your future. And each one of them can teach you something that you need to remove from your present. Does that make sense? All right, so step one, meaning influence, number one, Parental influences, beliefs, values. Gosh, Significance and meaning. Environmental influences. Everything from speech, continued development of values, culturistic values, tendencies and responses so that conflict resolution and how you interact with other people. Right.

So so far we have. Who are your parental influences? Either your biological parents or your parental figure. And then the environment that you were raised in. So the city you were in, the actual environment itself, you know, were you Upper middle class, were you lower class? Were you born wealthy into a wealthy family? Those things all play a part as well.

Yeah, exactly. You know, and the other thing that, like, if you think about it on the environmental side as well, typically people that grow up in a small town have the open door policy, help your neighbor kind of thing. If you grew up in the inner city, a lot of times it's protect your own. Okay, so that's another piece or pivot on what an environmental influence could look like.

Right. So yeah. Okay, I like that.

Alright, number three. So we went from the seed, meaning the acorn, to a developing root as we continue up the tree trunk. Right. We're starting to develop thicker roots. Right.

And if you want to visually understand this, go check out the whiteboard lesson, because we're going to tomorrow just check that out because we'll actually visualize the oak tree and it'll make more sense.

Totally. The third one is relational influences.

Okay.

Okay. So these are people, everybody typically has a childhood friend they grew up with or someone that they kind of connected with or something like that. So these are people who aren't part of your family but you came into contact with that added or illustrated a relational value.

Okay, so these are like childhood friends and peers.

Yeah, exactly. It's where the thing, the analogy or the topic comes from that. Show me your five friends, I'll show you your future.

Okay, for sure. Well, then it doesn't just necessarily have to be in your upbringing then. Only really the first two are.

Exactly. The first two have more to do with your upbringing. That's your foundational level of your worldview.

So once you get outside of, okay, your parental upbringing and your environment that you were raised in, then there's relationships and those pretty much your Spanish.

Now you're getting outside of your, your upbringing, your, your house, your family, now you're getting, okay, friendships, conflict resolution, you know, were you bully? Were you a bully? Were you bullied?

So whether you're 40 years old today and you have your five closest friends, this still applies. Absolutely. To your current.

Absolutely.

Okay. Absolutely.

Absolutely. It's another reason while it's possible to.

Work through or have like a situation like for example, the worst person you can get relationship advice from. Okay. If you're in a marriage or married, the worst person you get relationship advice from is someone who's been divorced five times, probably. Okay, that's an example of how a relational connection can potentially harm you.

Oh, so, okay, so let's say that you're friends with Bob, who's been married five times and been divorced five times.

Yeah.

And you're looking to get, you know, married to this spicy senior.

Maybe either married or maybe you're looking to get married boss. Because boss would be like, dude, never get married, you know?

Exactly, exactly. So you are, you know, looking to tie the knot with this spicy senorita.

Oh, my gosh.

And I've heard other influencers like that, so I don't know why. But. But yeah, so. So you have this part or your man's. Whoever. I don't care who you are. But. But then Bob. Bob says, oh, dude, you know, marriage, that never works, dude, you know, you can never find a girl who isn't crazy or something like that. And they say that, and then they influence you how?

Not realizing. Bob's probably a big part of the problem.

Oh, well, for. I would hope. I would think he is if he's been married.

This is why the relational influence is so important, because it tends to monkey with or adjust your purpose, your potential, your possibilities, your professional career, how you view relationships, how you view other people, how you view worldview. It's kind of like when people watch only one news source.

Okay. Yeah. So just watch CNN or just watch Fox or just watch any of those.

You know what I'm saying? It's an influence that influences your thought process and behaviors. Okay. Okay. So that's more of the tree trunk.

Right.

As we go up the tree trunk, you're going to start to have the level four influence, which is historically your situational influences. These are things that only happen in situation four. This is you getting. Getting hired for a job, fired for a job.

You having a car accident and dealing with it well. Or having a car accident and dealing with it like a jerk. Right. A situation occurs. Right. That influences your behavior in that moment. Okay. And that becomes part of it, can derail you in future growth depending on how strong that situation was. Right. An example could be someone who gets divorced. A lot of times, typically divorced people after they're divorced or during a divorce or separation go through massive identity crisises. Okay.

And that's situational.

And it's completely situational.

Okay.

The situation is, is they got divorced.

I see. So if you're. So let's say that you're going through a situation right now where your father just died.

That's a situation.

That's a situational influence that's going to impact your choices, your emotional states, your clarity of focus, etc.

Exactly.

Got it.

So. And that's what we're trying to get. We're trying to help you understand all the capacities or all the different levels of influences so you can pick the ones that are best suited for you. Okay. So again, situational influences. Divorce, getting hired, getting fired, getting married. You mentioned the death of a loved one. All of those are situational influences.

Could be positive too, right? Could be the birth of a child.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Right. But they all mean something different.

So all of these things up until this point, one through four, parental influences, your environment that you were raised in, your relationships, both past and present, present is more important, but past two, and then the situations that you're in, that would probably be contextual to the present moment, right?

Yeah.

So the situation you're in, all of these influences are actually making up how you act and respond today, right now.

Exactly. So if you are typically a more negative prone thinker, or someone who thinks poverty is part of lifesty permanently, or someone who thinks that relationships always fail, your mind has given you evidence to back it up based on one of these other influences.

Wow. So are you saying that limiting beliefs, or maybe not limiting beliefs, but your belief systems in general are forged from your influences?

Exactly.

Wow, that's really powerful. I didn't know that.

One of the questions we get. One of the questions you've hit me up for is how do you solve limiting beliefs when you solve limiting beliefs by understanding where the influences came from? And you do like the garden technique, which is what I told you before. You take a negative influence, AKA a weed, and you rip that joker out of the garden so your garden can grow.

Yeah. And then I guess it's just you staring at yourself in the front of the mirror and you can say, do I believe this or not?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. All right, so the next one's a big one. The next one has more to do with your present day.

Okay.

Okay. Now, it could have shaped your worldview in years leading up to this. But the next one is the most. I think the most can be the most dangerous. Okay. Because it's the most subtle. It's something you don't normally see coming because you're not paying attention to it. For example, back in the early 30s or 40s, a women wearing a bikini.

Swimsuit would have been seen as incredibly risque.

Oh, yeah.

Okay. Meanwhile, in today's timeframe, what have we done? Abc, I'm not going to call it any network, but you think any network. And essentially what's on there now is right, wrong or indifferent. Whether or not you see this as right, wrong or indifferent can Be incredibly risque at times. So much so that you may feel the need to cover your child's eyes.

I mean, look, you can just look at it like this. There's a very obvious difference between girls and the way guys dress, too. But girls walking down the beach in. What is a G string, like. Yeah, yeah. Thong or something like that. And then basically you can see their whole behind. Versus in the 1950s, that would never have flown.

I. I actually, I watched a young lady on Instagram, literally a couple nights ago. I'd say, watch. It's all posting. And at like 8 o' clock in the morning, it was a posting, and she was doing the whole duck faces and stuff like that and kind of doing like the. The seductive lip pose, like, kind of thing. Right? And I'm like, poor child. Three hours later, I see another one where she's kind of got her butt kind of poked out.

Yeah.

And I'm like, poor girl. And the reason I'm feeling that way is because she doesn't know her identity. She's feeling.

She.

That's. That's a fishing line.

I know.

Okay. And all that kind of stuff. So those kinds of things you got to be very careful with, because being a man myself, Right. We have to be careful with what we watch. Right? We get it. If we're gonna. If we're gonna screw up, it's typically gonna come through our eyes.

Okay.

Okay. Now, what I mean by that is, is the fifth one is subliminal influences, okay? And I can give you thousands of examples. Right? Watch this. Give me a break. Give me a break. Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar. Yep.

Right.

Okay. Subliminal influences have a massive effect on people, okay? Massive effect on people. Music, you listen to, movies you watch, TV shows you watch the social media channels you follow. News channels, you follow, Right? If you're listening. One of the.

Examples that I've seen kind of be, like, really prevalent was I was at the gym years ago. I'm kind of a gym rat. I like to work out when the gyms are open. Of course. Please, please, please open soon.

Yeah. Seriously, I'm trying to start going to the gym, and it's very, very difficult. All the years I bought a bow.

Flex gonna come.

Yeah. All the years prior, I was praying for an excuse not to go to the gym, and now I'm very frustrated. So please open them back up.

Yeah. You know, so you look at all this and you. And you put it all together. I watched this guy come in. It's a Super, super cool and friendly guy. Like, totally, like Levit, like living it up and being happy and all this kind of stuff. He proceeds to put on his headphones and all of a sudden, within about three minutes, he's bouncing. His face goes angry, like red. Like beat, beat red. And he's like. He's like looking at everybody at the gym, looking at everybody like he's angry at everybody. And then he goes to get some water off the water fountain and he pulls his headphones off and you can hear the music. And the music's like.

Exactly. And you're like. And you're like, this guy was like one of the nicest people you ever met. Three, four, ten minutes ago. And now he's literally angry and pissed.

Off.

Like, literally just because of listening to that crazy music.

It's because influences matter.

By the way, if you like thrasher music, that's okay. You're not crazy. I'm just kidding.

I'm saying be careful what you let your eyes and your ears see, because that's what you become.

Okay, yeah, that's fair enough. So if you like thrasher music, music, just be very careful because it's probably going to put you in an angry, negative state.

Exactly. And people aren't aware of attitudes and emotional states. They're just not aware. It's also precisely like our buddy Casey, for example, right? So he gave us different frequency, alpha, beta, and a few other. We went through an entire brainwave frequency education with him that was nuts, right? And he gave us a couple tracks. He said, look, when you want to concentrate, listen to this. When you want to sleep, listen to this. When you want to stay awake, listen to this. Right? And every single thing that he said was true right now. That's an influence based on auditory connection, okay? Your auditory connection and your visual connection are the two greatest gates that you've got to protect.

Your ears and your eyes.

Your ears and your eyes.

So, music. What movies are you watching? What TV shows?

So if you want to grow up to. If you want to be a faithful husband, then don't put your eyes on things that could cause you to dream.

That's good. That's a very good point.

If you want to be a person of integrity and maturity, then you probably shouldn't be watching a bunch of videos or everybody cussing left and right now. You just heard me use a quote unquote curse word a second ago. Nobody's perfect. What I'm saying is, is you got to be very, very careful what you put in your eyes and Your ears.

I definitely know from experience that when I have spent a lot more time watching certain influencers who cuss a lot, I tend to cuss a lot more. So that's definitely. If you are the type of person who wants to be careful about certain behaviors like that, for example, just be careful who you're watching and listening to. And I actually have not figured out a way yet to fix that besides just not listening to them, which I just don't do, because I don't. Because I want to listen to them, because I like them anyway. But. But, yeah, that's.

So don't come crying to me if you're still stumbling a year from now.

Yeah, that's fine.

You know, so just to kind of touch on that. Their subliminal influences control several things. Your overall consistent emotional state, not your foundational emotional state, but your consistency emotional state in that moment. Okay. Your attitudes, your actions, and over time, your worldview. That's why a nation can be deceived with the right media attention. Yeah, okay. Oh, yeah, right. That's how a nation can become. Go into fear or go into faith or go into blessing in a very quick fashion. All right. Gotta be super careful with what goes in your eyes and your ears. I personally have learned that one of the things that I have to do is I have to be very intentionally focused on choosing the influence. I listen to influencers, the news. I watch, if I watch news, because I don't particularly care for much of any of it.

Podcasts, music, most of my music, I like beats, I like rap. I like R and B. I like rock, I like country, I like all of it. Well, I got to make sure that I take the time to be careful with what I listen to. So I listen to stuff that's inspirational or upbeat. All right, so out of curiosity, what was a quick review of what you heard me say?

Yeah. So I'd say that we have the five different types of influences.

Right.

So you have to begin with, you have your parental influences, which. Which is basically your parental figures, whether they were your real parents or whether they were just a parental role in your life. Maybe you were raised by a grandmother. That would serve as a parental, motherly figure. Then you have your environmental influences. So if you grew up in Bronx, in the Bronx, you're probably gonna have an interesting accent, or you'll have a very different accent than if you were born in Boston and raised in Boston or Florida or California or anywhere else. You'll also have different things that you value. You'll also have different certain ways that you respond to things and tendencies. So your first two core upbringing based influences are your parental influences and your environmental. Then going into kind of spanning more.

Of your life, I would say more developmental.

Right. Is your relational influences and then your situational influences. So the relational one's really a big one because that is where we get the. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. We actually like to say that you are the average of your five influences especially well, because there are these five different core parts. And when people are talking about you're the average of your five closest friends, they're missing out on these other influences, which are also very important. So if you. If all you do is read books, then you don't have a lot of friends, then those books are probably one of your biggest influences. So moving on from relational, then number four is situational influences, which is kind of any major event that's going on, or it could be a contextual small event. So, like, would. Would the guy in the gym was a subliminal example. So I guess that's not situational at all. But could it be situational if, like your current, like when you go to the gym, you're in gym mode, does that count as situational at all? Could be, yeah. Okay, cool. So situational is like your actual situation that you're in. That's gonna be an influence that dictates the way that you react, whether you react in an angry form or a, you know, positive and upbringing. So then the final one is subliminal. Which did you say that was the most powerful?

It's the most powerful in as an adult.

Okay.

A lot of the other ones say kind of like almost like there's. There's a reason why they found the parental and the environmental are kind of under the ground. When you, when you look at our graphic on YouTube, when you see me do this on YouTube with the whiteboard lesson, it's because a lot of times those don't come to the surface right. When you're trying to remember I told you what does it change the essence of a man. I had to start from my fruit, which is the subliminal meaning. This is the area that I can see right now and go backwards all the way through to figure out what I needed to keep and what I needed to let go of. Okay. Subliminal influences can be so powerful right now as an adult, a young adult, a teenager, maybe a developing teenager, because they will be. That will actually be the fruit that everybody else gets to see from your life.

Well.

And it's how people will judge you.

I have a decent example for subliminal really quickly. So we talked about it could be music, it could be TV shows, it could be movies. It could also be, I assume, podcasts and YouTube videos. So this, right now what you're listening to is a subliminal influence? Could be, yeah, absolutely. I listen to every business influencer you can think of. I've watched thousands, if not tens of thousands of hours of content and listen to every podcast and everything. So if I end up being a super successful business person, probably those influences played a part because basically all I have let come in and out of my ears for the last eight years has been stuff like that. Personal development, business stuff like that. I think it's really powerful because I noticed that I listened to a few podcasts by some well known people in the industry. The MF CEO project's a big one. I like he cusses a lot. So if you don't like that, then it's not going to be for you. It is for me. I love him. It's Andy Frisella's podcast of first form.

It's also why I'm very, I tell him all the time, be very cautious of what you watch and listen to. Right?

Yeah. He curses a lot, but he's, he's actually my favorite. Besides you, he's my favorite entrepreneur.

Polar opposites.

I know. Well, dude, just because he cusses a lot doesn't mean that he doesn't have a lot of good things to say. But my top three are probably him, Gary Vee and Tom Bilyeu. So you guys made the list.

Congrats, man. Tom, I'm number four.

No, no, no, no, no. You're, you're, you're ahead of them. You automatically are ahead of them.

Don't even.

Those are my top three outside of you.

So, yeah, case in point. I want to make sure that people understand.

This is where your likes, what you like has to come into contact and balance with, with what you need. Right. Okay. You may like very derogatory music and very derogatory things. You maybe gravitate towards it. Okay. That tells me that unfortunately you're probably dealing with some wounds and some other things because historically people that are working, that are gravitate towards that stuff are typically, for lack of a better word, have a bit more stuck and lost in them. Does that make sense?

So maybe if you listen to more emo type of music, you are probably.

Exactly. So if you're if you're watching a lot of derogatory stuff, listen. Derogatory stuff, you are going to benefit the most from removing that and replacing it with something that's more positive and upbeat. And you can find stuff nowadays with the same kind of beats, the same kind of grungy guitars, and all kinds of stuff.

Well, and look, I'm glad you said it that way. Like, you will benefit from this, because I want. I could hear the person saying, well, I love thrasher music. Like, I don't want to give that up. And that's fair. You're willing to do that.

It's true.

We just want you to be cognizant that. That thrasher music you're listening to or the emo grunge or whatever you're listening to, it's probably having more of an impact on your thoughts and your emotional state than you think.

Higher. Higher relatability for nightmares and all kinds of things.

Right. So just be very careful and see if, like. Like, if you keep listening to that stuff, that's totally fine. I. Like I said, I'm gonna keep listening to the influencers who cuss. I'm probably gonna cuss a little bit. Not on this show, but.

Cause you'll get evicted.

Yeah. Cause I'll get evicted for sure. But.

That'S the risk that I play. But I know that by listening to those influencers, that's a risk that is posed. And that's valuable insight.

Well. And you need to be kind of thinking of it. The absolute worst possible mistake that you can make, and this is something I've actually gone over with my kids time and time again, is thinking these influences have no impact on you.

For sure.

It's the worst possible thing, because they all do.

I wish I could remember who said this quote. I want to say it was Tony Robbins, but because I can't quote it exactly, I don't want to.

Like, it's the benefit of watching too many influencer.

That's true. So anyway, so here's the thing. I think it was Tony, but somebody said something along the lines of, you have to stand guard at the entryway to your mind, or something like that. Okay. I think it was Rob's. Might not have been. But basically they said you need to stand guard as if there are. There are enemy combatants trying to get in.

That's what I'm saying.

That's the thing. So that's. We want you to take this seriously.

Because I. Connor's like, you're okay. You come on in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on into the club.

Yeah.

I'm like, yeah, it's fine, you're good. I'm just fine. Friendly man. I like to.

It's not. Yeah, I mean like I said, you got to focus on what you need more than what you, what you're accustomed to. And the reason you do that is if you're going to get go from stuck to unstoppable, if you're going to actually get traction, you are going to have to change the way you do things.

Right. And you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, studies the most and because of that you're the average of your top five influences. Keep in mind if you're the average and you're studying people who are not where you want to be that's the key really is you want to be listening to people who you would be okay with being like. If that's not the case, be very.

Careful and you'll find that you'll. Some of that will shift as you. As you grow and mature. Yeah. You know, I might get to a.

Point where I no longer can tolerate the cussing. I like it now, but I don't care.

Well, it's also because we've been desensitized to it because the other media sources now a shock value. I mean now they're book titles for.

Me it's like funny. It's like I don't. And plus it's just words so I'm just like yeah but words have value. Yes, for sure.

Words. Words can derail somebody's entire thing. When a parent comes to you and says you're worthless and you suck. Well, I know that's alright. So that's what I'm getting at is influences are more powerful than we give them credit for.

Absolutely.

Which is why they need to have more focus and more attention. Influences are so powerful that most people will at least marry at least the embodiment of at least one of their parents or an anti parent or an anti parent.

Yeah, that's definitely very powerful.

I can tell you that my first marriage because I've been married now twice and I'm very happily married now with Karen my first marriage unfortunately I ended up marrying one of the. What came across of. I don't want to condemn this my first wife at all because I'm sure I could have been a better husband too. But we had deliberate direct challenges in our marriage because I married some of the things that my parents could have improved upon. Like she, she became the. She was the illustration and embodiment of some of those characteristics which were not so great. Yeah. Which are not so great. And I'm. Again, I'm not going to shame anybody. She's on her journey and whatnot. I can tell you that when I married Karen, because I learned kind of about influences, I was more cognizant about who I married and why.

Because a pretty big decision, dude. You probably should have been careful the first time.

You would think. You would think most of us do, but most of us are, like, more focused on what someone does for a living or what someone looks like than the actual character of the person.

And that's a shame because those are.

Purely superficial things, which is why you have more broken homes than not. Right. It's because people aren't putting enough time and energy into one figuring out who they are. Right. So they're. Half a person is trying to marry another half a person expecting a whole marriage, which.

Imagine if we spent less time trying to find somebody who.

Basically gives us what we think we want, and instead we looked for somebody who actually is what we want.

Well, the reality is, too, we know when you marry somebody based on character traits and values and stuff like that, when those are bulk part of who you're marrying, then when life throws a curveball at you, right? So you can. You're. There's no willingness to kind of stray or whatever. So, for example, Karen's beautiful. Okay. Shortly after we got married, she began having health struggles. Right. And it's played. It's taken a toll on her body and her mobility, you know, And I'm sure part of her that she expressed at one time, part of her thought that I was going to cut and run because she wasn't, quote, unquote, the woman that I married, not realizing that from a superficial. From a superficial standpoint, not realizing was she is the woman that I married.

Yeah, right.

And when she discovers. When she continues. She's been doing this now, but when she continues to uncover that I'm not going anywhere, there's a foundation there that can be beautiful. Because let's face it, at 70, 80 years old. I'm sorry, it's not gonna be about.

Nobody's gonna be really attracted. I mean, maybe John Stamos, maybe you can get away with it, bro. You are you. And Rob Lowe, he's not that old, is he? They're like 50. Have you seen how they look?

I'm close to 50. I'll get five more years.

That's like ancient. But. Yeah, you know, I'm saying Do you.

Hear what he just said on air? Oh, my gosh.

I'm. I'm like early 20s, guys, so just.

I earned my wrinkles, thank you very much.

I'm just saying John Stamos has characteristically flute few of them for his age.

Again, like I said, you know, your influencer is so powerful that you'll historically marry or end up having a significant relationship with one of your most difficult parent parental figures, warts and all. Yes, Right. That's just gonna happen.

By the way, hey, if you're over 50, I love you. I wasn't meaning to be mean.

You heard what he said and I heard what he said.

All right.

The other thing I want you to consider is, when it comes down to questions, is how do you think your influences should shaped your life? And I mean, like, really seriously. Take that question seriously. Right? Think about that stuff. Consider how you talk to others. Do you lean into others in conversations or do you lean away from them? Do you listen or do you want to speak over top of people? Do people. There goes concert. Connor. Do people blow through your boundaries? All right, so in other words, do you allow people to just step all over your toes and boundaries or do you have firm boundaries? Like these are all things that are shaped during the influences part of your life. Right. What you stand for and what you stand against was trained.

So all these things that you think are you are actually coming from influences.

Exactly. Wow. Right. So if you're going to understand the real you, we have lots of different tools and assessments to figure that out. You need to do so from the perspective of, I genuinely want to figure out who I am, what I'm meant for and how I go there. Right. The other thing I was going to say about influences real fast, before it leaves my brain again is if you sincerely want to be the best you you can possibly be, then you are going to have to remove the negative influences that are around you, whether it be music, whether it be people, whether even be parents. I will tell you for a season. Right. My parents were still in a very healing process of their own, and it was not in my best interest to be connected to them on a regular basis. Right. My own father tried to talk me out of starting my first business. Now, he did so out of love, out of the information that he had at the time. Right. Not knowing that my life would shape up to be differently than some of the things that he experienced. Right. So people can genuinely come to you out of love and concern and still be wrong. Right. They can come to You. And they can speak.

Unfortunate negativity like, you're never gonna. You're never gonna do this. You're not focused enough. You're not working hard enough. And from their perspective, they think they're showering you of love, but really what they're showering you with is limitations.

Well, what they actually think they're doing is they think they're protecting you.

And what they're really doing is protecting themselves. Protecting the figurative selves, the things in their ego. Yeah. Protecting the things that they haven't had to achieve themselves. So here's what I learned. If you want to master every single area of your life, one of the first areas you got to master is your influence. Your influences have to now become chosen versus influenced.

So you need to choose to put down Game of Thrones and listen to more podcasts. Doesn't have to be ours. We don't care if it's yours.

Could be.

Read more books, whatever, but read more books. Study things by people who are where you want to be in life or who give you the information you need to become that person.

That's right.

Instead of spending your time around people who are holding you back.

Yeah. Like I said, this one piece of content.

Had a huge impact in transforming me because it allowed me to look at people who hurt and harm me as wounded kids because they didn't know what they didn't know. So I was able to free them and let them go, let that hurt and that weirdness go and all that kind of stuff. Right. Because they didn't know what they didn't know. And I was able to go in and retake the influences that things that the negative influences they placed in my life and remove them and replace them. So that's how powerful this can be. So four steps to get you going. Okay, so we gotta get in the show. We're running a little bit long. But honestly assess what impact the five influences have had on you as of and up until today. Five influences again. Parental, environmental, relational, situational, and subliminal. Okay. Honestly assess what happened and where those things came into play. All right, number two, ask yourself, are these influences taking me further towards my goals or further away from my goals?

That will tell you if that influence needs to stay or go. Okay. The answer is no. Adjust. Step three is adjust. Make the switch. Have courage. Make the change. Don't wait. Every day you wait, the change of influence is having a negative impact in your life. Is 10 years off you attaining your goals? Think about that. How do I know that I lived it.

You wasted 10 years.

I wasted a decade.

Oh, man. Just didn't figure out influences because I.

Didn'T figure out influences.

Wow.

A decade. Extremely powerful. Step four, add influences that can take you towards your goals and aspirations. Okay.

I love it.

All right, you heard it. Influences. Hit it hard. Hit it serious. If you want more information on this, check out the whiteboard lesson. When I draw all out, go in a little more detail on each one of the influences to help. They'll help you better understand it. We love you. We're thankful for you. We're here to help you win. We believe in you and we'll see you again on the next journey. Principles. Take care, guys.

See you guys.

I'll see you in the next video. And please, if you don't mind and you enjoyed the Life Mastery content we're building, consider hitting the subscribe button and also hitting the bell so you'll be the first to get notified anytime we release new content.