I had this thought while writing randomly. It wasn’t something I planned to arrive at. It just showed up somewhere as a glimpse, if you will. I accidentally happened to stumble upon it. The idea that one’s own thoughts and ideas could become a medium of influence, instead of constantly depending on something outside for motivation.
On the surface, this sounds simple. Almost obvious. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized how rarely we actually live this way. Psychology has spoken about this for years. Daniel Kahneman, for instance, talks about how most of our thinking happens automatically. Fast, reactive, effortless. We respond before we reflect. We consume before we choose. And unless we consciously slow down, our thinking is mostly shaped by what is placed in front of us.
A large part of our lives is spent exactly like that. Reacting. To people, situations, content, and opinions. Always responding to something external. In the middle of all this, there is an internal voice that is always present, but rarely heard. It does not interrupt. It does not compete. And because of that, it gets ignored.
Over time, this turns us mechanical. Not just in what we do, but in how we think. Thoughts keep coming, opinions keep forming, reactions keep happening, but very little of it feels conscious. Mentally also, we are constantly arguing. With people who are not there. With situations that have already happened. With things that might happen. Mental arguments make up most of our day, but we almost never stop to think about the quality of these thoughts themselves.
The times we are living in make this even easier. Influence is everywhere now. Things that were once hard to access are now just one scroll away. Reels are a classic example. You don’t really decide how much effort you want to put into knowing something. The platform decides it for you. You feel like you know something, but all you have done is consume a few seconds of it.
There is a big difference between knowing something and knowing about something. Today, most people know about everything. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Psychology, finance, fitness, cinema, politics. The width is impressive. The depth is missing. Depth needs effort. It needs you to sit with something even when it’s boring or uncomfortable. Most people don’t do that anymore.
People are constantly being influenced. Constantly exposed. But very few are actually making a conscious effort to learn something properly, to take something out of it, to let it change the way they think. Everything just passes through.
Sometimes I think about what would happen if one just stepped away from the algorithm. Not permanently, not dramatically. Just a step back. How would you behave if social media did not exist? Would you still be influenced so easily, or would you be forced to sit with your own thoughts? Would you try to influence yourself from within instead of waiting for something outside to do it for you? And if you did that, would that eventually influence others who are still stuck in the same loop?
I know I am also part of this. I am not outside it. I get influenced. I get distracted. I react more than I should. But I am at least aware of it. And that feels like something. Awareness does not fix the problem, but it changes the nature of it.
It is probably the first step away from being completely mechanical. Even if nothing else changes immediately, knowing that you are being influenced makes you pause sometimes. And that pause matters.
Maybe thought itself can become a medium of influence. Not loudly. Not online. First internally. And maybe that is how it has always worked anyway.
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