Believing The Messenger

As ambitious and growth oriented individuals, an important skillset for us to develop is to be more influential. To influence means ‘to impact the way something happens’. Ultimately, we want to be a positive influence on others to hit our personal goals and shape the world around us.

The best thing we can do to be more influential is be the example. Your personal choices reflect your character, and the expression ‘actions speak louder than words’ is really true. When we live in a way that others respect and admire, people believe us more. It causes our message to get delivered with more authority and credibility.

The reason I mention this is because when giving guidance or advice, we must understand the order of operations: People must first believe in you, and only then will they consider what you have to say.

They will not hear the content of your message unless they think the content of the message is worth listening to.

So that’s the first step - If you don’t believe the messenger you won’t believe the message. No matter how good and sound the advice is, the evaluation of the person comes first.

I feel like this is the biggest point of conflict people have with authority figures. Bosses, parents, and others in superior positions try to influence others’ behavior. But if they’re not respected, trusted, or a living example of the mission they promote, then it creates resentment. 

In order to be a person others believe and want to follow, we need to hold ourselves to higher standards. We need to be disciplined and do what we say we’re going to do. We need to demonstrate the character traits and qualities others want to see in themselves. And that comes from showing up, day in and day out, for the betterment of ourselves and others.

Be a believable messenger.

And if you want to reach the levels of discipline and daily performance that other people will feel inspired to follow, I encourage you to learn about the 9 Super Habits. These are the small micro-actions and micro-routines that work behind the scenes to help you follow through on consistently making good health choices and increasing your daily productivity.

>> Click here to learn about the 9 Super Habits and how to implement each in 15 minutes a day!