What’s Influence?

1. What’s Influence? • Social influence • From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia • Social influence occurs when an individual's thoughts, feelings or actions are affected by other people. Social influence takes many forms and can be seen in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, sales, and marketing. In 1958, Harvard psychologist, Herbert Kelman identified three broad varieties of social influence.[1] • Compliance is when people appear to agree with others, but actually keep their dissenting opinions private. • Identification is when people are influenced by someone who is liked and respected, such as a famous celebrity or a favorite uncle. • Internalization is when people accept a belief or behavior and agree both publicly and privately.

2. Positive or Negative?

3. The Influence of Spiritual World Occult Influence of Spirits on Our Thoughts and Actions. • 459. Do spirits influence our thoughts and our actions? • "Their influence upon them is greater than you suppose, for it is very often they who direct both." • 460. Have we some thoughts that originate with ourselves, and others that are suggested to us? • "Your soul is a spirit who thinks. You must have observed that many thoughts, and frequently very opposite ones, come into your mind in reference to the same subject, and at the same time. In such cases, some of them are your own, and some are ours. This is the cause of your uncertainties, because you have thus in your mind two ideas that are opposed to each other." • 461. How can we distinguish between the thoughts which are our own and those which are suggested to us? • "When a thought is suggested, it is like a voice speaking to you. Your own thoughts are generally those which first occur to you. In point of fact, this distinction is not of much practical importance for you, and it is often better for you not to be able to make it. Man's action is thus left in greater freedom. If he decides for the right road, he does so more spontaneously; if he takes the wrong one, he is more distinctly responsible for his mistake."

4. 462. Do men of intelligence and genius always draw their ideas from their own minds? • "Their ideas sometimes come from their own spirit; but they are often suggested to them by other spirits who judge them to be capable of understanding them, and worthy of transmitting them. When they do not find the required ideas in themselves, they make an unconscious appeal for inspiration; a sort of evocation that they make without being aware of what they are doing." • If it were useful for us to be able to distinguish clearly between our own thoughts and those which are suggested to us, God would have given us the means of doing so, as he has given us that of distinguishing between day and night. When a matter has been left by Providence in a state of vagueness, it has been left so because it is better for us.

5. Why does God permit spirits to incite us to evil? • 466. • "Imperfect spirits are used by Providence as instruments for trying men's faith and constancy in well-doing. You, being a spirit, must advance in the knowledge of the infinite. It is for this end that you are made to pass through the trials of evil in order to attain to goodness. Our mission is to lead you into the right road. When you are acted upon by evil influences, it is because you attract evil spirits to you by your evil desires, for evil spirits always come to aid you in doing the evil you desire to do; they can only help you to do wrong when you give way to evil desires. If you are inclined to commit murder, you will have about you a swarm of spirits who will keep this inclination alive in you; but you will also have others about you who will try to influence you for good, which restores the balance, and leaves you of your decision." • It is thus that God leaves to our conscience the choice or the road we decide to follow, and the liberty of yielding to one or other of the opposing influences that act upon us.

6. By what means can we neutralize the influence of evil spirits?

7. By what means can we neutralize the influence of evil spirits? 469 • "By doing only what is right, and putting all your trust in God, you repel the influence of inferior spirits, and prevent them from obtaining power over you. Take care not to listen to the suggestions of spirits who inspire you with evil thoughts, stir up discord among you, and excite in you evil passions. Distrust especially those who flatter your pride, for, in so doing, they attack you on your weakest side. This is why Jesus makes you say in the Lord's Prayer, 'Let us not succumb to temptation, but deliver us from evil.'"

8. 515. What is to be thought of those persons who seem to attach themselves to certain individuals in order to urge them on to their injury, or to guide them on the right road? • "Some persons do, in fact, exercise over others a species of fascination which seems irresistible. When this influence is used for evil, it is to be attributed to evil spirits, who make use of evil men in order the more effectually to subjugate their victim. God may permit this in order to try you."

9. Influence of Spirits in our Lives • 525. Do spirits exercise an influence over the events of our lives? • "Assuredly they do; since they give you advice." • -- Do they exercise this influence in any other way than by means of the thoughts they suggest to us, that is to say, have they any direct action on the course of earthly events? • "Yes; but their action never oversteps the laws of nature." • We erroneously imagine that the action of spirits can only be manifested by extraordinary phenomena we would have spirits come to our aid by means of miracles, and we imagine them to be always armed with a sort of magic wand. Such is not the case; all that is done through their help being accomplished by natural means, their intervention usually takes place without our being aware of it. Thus, for instance, they bring about the meeting of two persons who seem to have been brought together by chance they suggest to the mind of some one the idea of going in a particular direction. They call your attention to some special point, if the action on your part thus led up to by their suggestion, unperceived by you, will bring about the result they seek to obtain. In this way, each man supposes himself to be obeying only his own impulse, and thus always preserves the freedom of his will.

10. Best Practices

11. I am responsible for my choices. “We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everywhere.”

12. Influence