Examining the influential people in your life

• Refreshers: they inspire your dream and energize your talents.
• Refiners: they sharpen your ideas and clarify your vision.
• Reflectors: they mirror your energy, neither adding nor subtracting from it.
• Reducers: they try to reduce your vision and efforts to their comfort level.
• Rejecters: they deny your talent, hinder your efforts, and impede your vision.

Getting a helicopter view of your life entails examining the influential people in your life and ascertaining which category they fall into.  This should determine how you would continue relating with them. Remember the popular saying – “you cannot fly with the eagles if you scratch with the chickens.” Some of us need to change the people in our inner circle; others need to refresh their pool of friends; and a few of us may just need to change our church if we are not growing there. You should also evaluate your relationship with your spouse to identify areas where you need to make profitable adjustments.

Above all, you should evaluate your person. If your friends were to place you in any of these 5 categories, where would you fall? In addition, you should never forget that as a believer, you have the power that raised Christ from the dead dwelling in you and you can do all things. However, the person that is most powerful to hinder your progress is you.  What are the internal changes you require to help you advance towards your purpose? D. L Moody once said, “I have never met a man who has given me much trouble as myself.” If you would look deep inside you, I believe you will also see many troubles you are giving yourself and I trust God to assist you in addressing them.

Tope S. Aladenusi

This write-up was culled from the article – The helicopter view of a leader’s life. Visit www.topealadenusi.com to read preceding parts of this article.