Influencing Others Towards Good

Influencing Others Towards Good

Blogging Through the ABC’s -Letter I

In our daily lives we influence others.  I’m not talking about on the blog or internet, I’m talking about in our day to day lives, in our everyday lives.  We need to focus on influencing others towards good choices and good actions.  What are our actions and our choices telling them?  

More importantly, in my opinion, the others we need to be influencing are our children.  How can we be influencing others towards good if we’re not modeling that in our daily lives in front of them?  Now replace others with our children.  How can we be influencing our children towards good if we’re not modeling that behavior to them.

I thought of replacing good with God in this title.  It would fit.  But I also wanted to be able to touch on some little things without having to tie them back into the theme and influencing others towards good just flowed better with that.  But do please be aware that I think we should always be living our lives in a way that is pleasing to God and influencing others towards Him.  Just be sure that that influence you’re having is a positive one.

In my daily life I like to think on how what I’m doing is influencing my children.  How is it affecting them?  How is it asking them to act?  Because they are going to mimic us.  If I’m sitting around all day on my phone or the computer chances are I’m not going to be able to get them to clean their room when asked.  If they don’t ever see me modelling a cleaning behavior they won’t consider it something that is part of daily life and needs done.

That’s why we have chore charts.  That’s why we have a daily schedule.  That’s why I’m trying to be very aware of how I’m spending my time and what I’m doing.  How am I influencing other towards good?  More importantly how am I influencing my children towards good.  

I love to read.  My mom loves to read and I’d see her reading.  I grew up reading.  Reading is a great activity.  But it can’t be the only activity we engage in.  My children love to read.  I like to think that part of that is because they see my love of reading and that I have influenced them in this way.  So daily we have a quiet reading time where we all sit somewhere that we find comfortable and read.  This has to be in their bedrooms or the living room.  

Now another aspect while we’re thinking on influencing others towards good and my love of reading is my blog.  I do book reviews.  I have an opinion on these books that I read.  I also only read and review Christian books.  So in this way I’m influencing those who may read my reviews towards good by pointing them towards good Christian fiction books.  Something so simple as what I read can be an influence.  

It’s also an influence to my children because they do pay attention to what I read.  I pay attention to what they read as well.  When we go to the library I look over the books they pick out and make sure that they are going to fit into what our family values and are appropriate for them to read.  I can explain this to them and also I can truthfully tell them that mommy would not read a book that I won’t let them read.  

What about you?  What in your daily life are you doing that is an influence to others?  Remember if you have children that they are always watching.  If you’re out and about or just spending a day at home, they’re watching you and wanting to imitate you.  Influencing others towards good seems to be a great motto to have while we’re training and growing our children.

Check out my other Blogging Through The ABC’s posts to find out what the other letters of the alphabet have to say to me.