Influencers

Many years ago, I started following a cooking blog. Every recipe was delicious, and nothing was very complicated. Plus, a friend of mine actually knew the cooks behind it all, which I liked. I was a fan.

I bought their cookbooks and tried tons of their recipes. I started giving their cookbooks as wedding gifts, and I told everyone I knew about the wonderful food we were eating at my house. I even enjoyed their backstories about the food and ingredients they used. One story in particular bashed a little on Miracle Whip. As a lifelong hater of that garbage, I was all in. Yes! These girls just understood good food…and me.

Time went by, and my loyalty never wavered. I loved this blog so much. They had truly influenced my cooking life at home.

One day, things changed.

I hopped on their site, and there was a recipe for fish tacos. Oh boy! I scrolled down to the recipe and saw Miracle Whip as one of the ingredients listed. WUT? I did a double take. This had to have been a typo! There was no way this woman was using that stuff in her fish tacos. I went back to the top and read all the content. Oh, it was definitely NOT a typo. The fish taco recipe used, and was sponsored by—you guessed it—Miracle Whip.

I sat staring at my computer screen for a long time. Was this the same person I had been following all of this time? The one who, like me, couldn’t stand Miracle Whip? Who was really doing the influencing?

Since then, I have spent many hours thinking about influencers. In the last ten years, this profession has grown exponentially. The influencer evolution unfolds the same way again and again. Typically, they start out on a small scale, only really influencing a small group. But as their popularity and audience grows, they seem to do less influencing and become more influenced by the ever-growing, louder sphere. It’s an interesing phenomenon to observe. Again, I wonder who is really being influenced?

Here’s the deal.

We are constantly influenced by people and things around us. What we eat, what we wear, how we spend our time, how we spend our money, who we spend our time with, what we read and what we watch are all evidences of our influences. So…choose your influences on purpose. Don’t let the loudness of the crowd or the size of the mob have any impact on you, unless you allow it intentionally.

It sounds so easy, right? If it were easy, we wouldn’t see people landing in a place they never wanted to be. We wouldn’t see influencers blown this way and that, like a leaf in a windstorm.

The best way to be intentional with your influences is to know where you want to be. I’m not talking generalities here. I mean, specifically, who do you want to be? Where are you going? Where is your desired end point? If you don’t have one, the influencing winds of whomever will blow you in a direction of their choosing, not yours.

Influences are everywhere.

Be intentional with yours.