Influence:

Consider all the people you will come into contact with during your lifetime. Some you will simply pass on the sidewalk without as much as a glance. With others you will share the depth of your soul. They could be a one-act, a lifetime soul brother, a conversation, a conflict, a wise-woman, a dinner, a powerful presence or a wisp of presence that leaves their essence with you.
 
The numbers of who you contribute to with who you are and whatever it is you do are likely relatively small. You may directly influence one person in your lifetime. Or a few million. 
 
You don’t have to convince someone of your way of doing things to contribute to their lives. You can hold intention without agendas, without invading another’s space.
 
The ground you hold, regardless of your opinion or perspective, is what matters. How you hold your perspective is what delivers it and what others receive—with love, with violence, with trickery, with integrity, with generosity. It’s a tall order in such a polarized world to have influence or contribution without an agenda, on the individual level and the global. And it’s a mature one.
 
It takes consistent introspection to discern what truly drives you—in your relationships, in your business and work, in your view of yourself—in the big picture and in specific situations. What drives you—survival, connection, control, love, respect, dominion, equality, care, honor, nobility, judgment, acceptance, kindness—determines the quality of your influence. 
 
For a time, the western world, or the world of written history, functioned from Newton’s physics forgetting its ancient roots. Competition. Scarcity to get what is yours. Disconnected. Physical effort and might gets it done. All things physical being the reality.
 
Then Einstein’s physics, Max Planck’s physics, entered the scene. Creative. Infinite. Plenty. Connected. Revealing that consciousness is the reality behind and within everything and can be discerned. Thus everything is malleable. It merged the mystical truths of the ages with the physical world to remind us of the unity we come from, who we really are, and what we’re capable of.
 
 “Quantum physics tells us that the future is not written in stone, but instead is indeterminate and filled with infinite potential. How the world of the quantum manifests depends on how we dream it.” ~ Paul Levy
 
What we’re capable of. That is the question. We determine—we dream—our next experience. 
 
That dream becomes your influence. Other’s dreams may sweep you up for a time, feeling the energy of theirs more than your own, globally or individually.

You may get lost in your own unconscious agendas, playing them out until you awaken to knowing yourself, to the shaping power of your dreams, the ancient unity, the optimum of which you are capable and why that matters whether you influence one or many.
 
Dreams that move life forward will fill your own body with life. This is an important measure of their quality. And you’ll notice they fill others aligned with you as well. Simple dreams and complex ones. To lead a country. To love and spoil the one you share your life with. To build and lead a billion-dollar company with an uncompromising happiness quotient. 
 
Then the body of humanity, your company culture, your neighbor, your mailing list, your wife, your friend, your patients and clients, your child, your body and mind, become the recipients of your wholly aligned influence.
 

Here’s to more of You in this world, 

Shelley