We're all highly susceptible to influence.
Why? Because we are social and self-preserving. We don't just do best in community, we actively need and seek it out.
Thus, it's no wonder that we want to be part of a community.
And to fit in that community, we take cues of behaviour and mindsets from others around us, especially those who are respected or, at least, somehow elevated in the community.
Since this is all hardwired into us, and we've been picking up cues since we were born, we get really good at it. Practically an instinct.
Which means that it's also impossible to be free of influences.
What I learned is:
The first thought that enters our heads is a result of external influences, whether it's upbringing, culture, the people I hang around with the most, etc.
We can call this programming, conditioning, internalisation, or what we like, but it's kind of in-built and very difficult to override.
What's really important is what we do, say, and/or think after that first thought appears.
That is what makes us who we are.
Learning the Hard Way: Who vs How
I was brought up in a family that espoused independence and valued self-reliance.
From a young age, I heard things like,
“Don’t rely on others,”
“The world doesn’t owe you a living”,
“God helps those who help themselves” (Slightly odd, because we were not a spiritual / religious family).
I rarely accepted help and even more rarely asked for it.
My worldview was that nobody was going to “save” me. I had to figure out where to go and beat my own path.
It certainly didn’t help that social skills weren’t my strong suit. Yet, I didn’t feel that much of a loss because I thought that I didn’t need help anyway.
I never thought that this was out of the ordinary.
The trouble with having such a mindset is that you start to question the motives of people who may genuinely want to help - not out of selfish desire or personal gain, but just to be helpful.
I certainly had these thoughts. If I didn’t want to help others, why would someone else want to help me?
Even today, this question enters my mind.
I am skeptical of others and their intentions, and I see extending a helping hand as having the effect of disabling the other person’s resilience, i.e. helping others makes them / keeps them weak.
Troublingly, this fed a fear of weakness. I feared that accepting help would make me weaker or cause others to think that I am weak.
Through reading a number of books and my involvement and participation in a Men’s Group (which I talked about in an earlier post), I started working through the latter issue.
The former issue - that of my fear that accepting help would make me weaker - is still an issue. As I think on it, I find that I don’t apply this as much to other people now, but I still apply it to myself.
It’s something I definitely have to work through because it’s starting to become problematic, especially in my current journey to validating and launching an online workshop - currently aimed at fellow introvert teachers / trainers who are new to the craft.
I will talk to someone who already has a sizeable online community, who is also an introvert, and who has previously offered to help promote useful content to his community.
I don’t know how it will go, but let’s try. One step at a time.
