Influence: According to the Oxford Dictionary, influence is: “the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself.”One of the most potent examples of this was my fourth semester in university.I was a dorm steward (commonly associated with an RA). I led the room, I enforced the order, I was there for these men daily. Weekly dorm cleaning was mandatory. We all knew it was a drag and not the most enjoyable aspect of sharing a room with an additional seven other fellas (as one could imagine).Yet, I wanted to make it as enjoyable, approachable, and automatic as possible. So I curated a playlist that had specific songs to emphasize specific things. Initially it was an upbeat soundtrack for whilst we were cleaning but slowly, overtime, it morphed into something even more. As soon as the playlist began, I would hear audible groans from the other roommates as they could no longer sleep since the playlist was on. Further, the playlist would end with the star spangled banner and other rooms would hear our playlist and proceed to join us in honoring the flag each week as the semester transpired.While I’m not suggesting that conditioning is to be equated to influence, understanding that the outcome produced by the playlist in the men was what influenced them to wake up, know what time it was, clean, and end on a note of purpose. It’s important then, to analyze what subconsciously drives us. What content, behaviors, beliefs, relationships do we allow to directly shape the way we orient ourselves and our purposes? Dr. Healthy Gamer, as his profile is listed, was featured on the Modern Wisdom Podcast this last week, and pertaining to our response to things that have the potential to influence us, he suggests the following, “You can only control your actions and reactions.” W can’t control outcomes or the situation we may walk into, or the consequences of actions that we may have to process from the past. We can only control how we react to them and how we act in the world. This was profound as I reviewed the power of influence as it points to the fact that the responsibility is truly upon us and what we decide will change, morph, and shape us. Therefore, we need to ask, “What are the optics in striving for?”In my body, in my finances, in my relationships, in my intellect, in my spiritual formation. In alignment with setting the tone, we must understand that what we allow to influence us and how we influence will affect who we are today, are tomorrow, and how we will influence the next generation.