How To Be Influenced

Acknowledge just how much of what you think, feel and do is picked up from others, consciously and unconsciously, and try to become more conscious of more of them.

Once you see yourself as merely a junction point for a whole set of influences, from your parents to your teachers to the feeds you follow and the articles and books you read, you can relax about being ‘you’. You can focus, instead, on making your influence-set as unique, layered and rich as possible. Nobody else will be at your junction point.

If there is one thing the advent of social media has brought home to us, it is how little we think for ourselves.