Of course, by the right people and the right messages.

I have seen many people who complain about attending seminars (leadership, self-development) and getting nothing out of it. When I probe further, half these people were making an assessment of the speaker and speculating whether to agree with the speaker or not. In other words, they had not given the full license to the speaker to influence them. The focus was more on the speaker and not on the message.

Here is something for you to consider. It requires a lot of courage to be influenced. Think about it. If you are influenced by a message fully, you will have to do something about it. Then you got to be accountable. You will have to find a great excuse when you slip on the follow through. Lets look at the alternative. If you are not fully influenced or make an intelligent comment about a situation where the speaker’s claims may not work, you got yourself a license not to act on what you learnt. Repeat this a few times and you can make a generic claim that none of these things work. Its a total waste of your time. Take it to an extreme and you can graduate to become a cynic.

Having great teachers on your side can be a competitive advantage for you. However, if you are not a good student and won’t allow the teacher to get through to you, it won’t be of much help. After some time, those teachers will disappear. They have limited time and if you don’t make good progress, it may not be a good investment of their time. There may not be a big enough ROII for them.

When was the last time you were completely influenced by something or someone? What kind of action did you take because of that? What were the circumstances under which you were influenced? If you experienced positive results, what can you do to create those or similar circumstances to get influenced again?