How to influence everyone around you

A bold statement? Perhaps, but you have to admit that it made you curious. Most of us would like to have some level of influence, even if we don’t say it out loud, and for those of us who openly admit it, learning more, perhaps even getting a new perspective, is always useful. So, with free will of others and things not always going to plan, how would this even be possible and why does it matter?

The reason many of us would like to influence others is to have more control and have things go our way. The interesting thing is, that when asked, most people aren’t even sure why they need to have control. Some answer with, not having had it growing up so now they need it. Is that a good enough reason though? In reality we crave control to mitigate threat. Now, assuming you will use the tactics below with good intentions, let’s dive into how you can influence everyone around you. 

Regulate your emotions

If you truly want control, start by controlling your emotions. That’s a task that needs attention round the clock. The reality is that while life may often imitate art, our everyday lives aren’t and shouldn’t be a soap opera. Massive outbursts of emotions are rarely conducive to any situation and more detrimental than helpful. There is also a massive difference between doing what you want and achieving what you want. For example, if you’re having a conversation with someone or even trying to get a deal done, never lead with your ego and agenda but ask yourself what you want the outcome to be? What would you want to have happen? When you’re very emotional about a topic, it can certainly coax some sympathy out of the other person but is that what you really want? Wouldn’t it be better if they decide in your favour because you had realistic, tangible and logical reasoning rather than floods of tears and outrageous emotional outbursts?

Granted, most people don’t cry in meetings or the board room but anger and harsh words can come into play. The idea is that in communication, in discussions, prioritise using your deliberate, considered words rather than heightened emotions of any kind.

Understanding why we get upset, reactive in the first place is a key component to subsequently controlling our emotions. We get upset when people don’t behave in a way, we expect them to.

Allow me to share 3 incredibly important truths about your fellow humans, that might be hard to swallow. Accepting these facts can be extremely liberating though and will allow you to move past problems much faster.

1.      People do what they want to do. If someone isn’t responding to you, they simply have other priorities. No one is that busy. They could respond while walking, on the toilet or between two bites. Stop making excuses, that you know deep down, are absolutely untrue.  

2.      People give you what they can. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what amazing potential you might see in someone, if they simply don’t have the capacity, skills or willingness to give you more. Stop holding your breath and hoping that they will see what you see in them one day.

3.      People lie to be liked. By far one of the most confusing things is when people make promises, paint a grand picture of a possible future for you and never follow through. You’re then left asking useless questions, replaying every moment in your head as to why the words don’t match the actions. It’s because people lie to be liked, and weasel out at the last moment.

You have to allow people to be who they truly are and also be ok with the realisation that they aren’t who you thought they were.

Masks tend to fall after around 3 or 4 months as it’s hard to keep up appearances for much longer than that. Be ok with moving on if someone in your life is causing you consistent grief, weather it be a colleague, a friend or a lover. Your inner piece is far more valuable.

Another issue with regulating emotions is that they seem to come out of nowhere and we are ‘caught off guard’ most of the time. An excellent method I used myself, a practical way to help with reactions, is a technique called ‘alternate nostril breathing’.

It helps regulate your nerves when you start to feel anxious, reactive but more importantly, it will help create a balance between the 2 sides of the brain, which has amazing benefits. By practicing this breathing technique, you will have 5 to 10 more seconds between feeling an emotion and acting on it. I truly believe this is immensely helpful when it comes to emotional regulation.

The right side of our brain is in charge of present moment awareness, it’s in charge of creation, intuition, creative problem solving and the left side of our brain is in charge of the past & future, language, critical thinking.  Usually, the 2 different hemispheres of the brain operate separately but with this technique we wake up both sides and they begin to operate at the same time. We are also strengthening something called the corpus callosum, the bridge that connects the right and left hemispheres. This is important because this will help create a gap between emotion and reaction.

Steps to do alternate nostril- breathing:

·        Sit quietly somewhere you don’t need to give any tasks your full attention.

·        Bring your hand up to your nose and move your forefinger and middle finger out of the way. Place your thumb on your right nostril.

·        With this nostril covered, close your eyes and exhale fully and slowly through your left nostril.

·        Once you’ve exhaled completely, release your right nostril and put your ring finger on the left nostril.

·        Breathe in deeply and slowly from the right side. Make sure your breath is smooth and continuous.

·        Once you’ve inhaled completely, exhale through your right nostril.

·        Release your ring finger and close your right nostril with your thumb again. Breathe in fully and exhale fully from your left nostril.

·        Repeat the full process four or more times.

Alternate nostril breathing is a simple yet powerful practice to harmonize the body and mind, calm the nervous system, and optimize focus and breathing efficiency, while giving you that 10 second edge, that ability to consider your words before you speak.

Running is another fantastic way to regulate emotions through a combination of biological, psychological, and behavioural mechanisms that enhance mood stability and reduce stress. During and after running, the body releases chemical messengers like endorphins, serotonin, and endocannabinoids, which alleviate stress, foster feelings of calm and happiness, and counteract anxiety and depression symptoms.

When you have control over your emotions, you automatically have more control over situations, conversations, you have more leverage to negotiate better and subsequently get what you want.

Create a new narrative

Simply reading the title of this article may have triggered a reaction within you, leading to resistance and an immediate urge to push back. It may have sounded far too ambitious, too bold, you may have been unable to identify with someone who has any sort of influence. This is exactly why we need to change the narrative, the story you’ve been telling yourself.

Undoubtably our experiences and our past shape who we are, it’s what makes us unique but there is a problem with that. Our memories are never exactly the same when we recall them because memory retrieval is an active, reconstructive process rather than a static playback. Each time a memory is recalled, it undergoes a process called reconsolidation, during which the memory trace can be modified, strengthened, or weakened before being stored again. This means that memories evolve over time and are influenced by new experiences, emotions, and information. Memories are not stored as precise recordings but rather constructed from fragments of information distributed across brain regions. When recalling, the brain pieces these fragments together, which can introduce distortions or alterations based on current context, expectations, or biases.

This is exactly why our identity that we’ve built shouldn’t be set in stone. It’s not wise or helpful to hold on to shreds, fragments of memories as if our life depended on it.

In my line of work I sometimes get questioned about the accuracy of the memories that come up in the sessions, but it’s almost entirely irrelevant. It’s not important what happened to you in your life but what meaning you assigned to it. It’s always about the way you interpret a memory, an event and not what actually happened. For instance, a parent spending long hours at work doesn’t make you less lovable or insignificant. It’s easy to see how a young child, lacking the emotional maturity and understanding, could misinterpret that and form a belief that they are not important enough.

The brain is an energy preserving organ. It does not reinterpret and reanalyse every new situation because it relies heavily on pattern recognition and efficient processing to conserve cognitive resources and respond quickly to the environment. The brain has evolved to recognize familiar patterns rapidly through specialized neural circuits, especially in the neocortex, allowing it to categorize incoming sensory information without extensive conscious analysis every time. When a situation matches known patterns, the brain uses this stored knowledge to make quick decisions rather than starting from scratch. This approach is essential because continual deep analysis of every detail would be cognitively exhausting and slow, reducing our ability to respond adaptively in real time. This can be problematic because if you were disregarded, dismissed as a child, made to feel insignificant in some way, your brain stored that scene away. The next time you are in similar circumstances, it won’t spend time dissecting the details and interpreting the new event, it will just file it away and reinforce the old belief that was formed from the original event. You can choose a new narrative though. Being older, being wiser you can get an understanding of why certain things happened to you in your past and how that made you form specific beliefs. Once you deconstruct and question old, outdated beliefs they lose their power over you. If memories aren’t perfectly accurate, why should your identity, or the stories you’ve been telling yourself be fixed?

Spend some time and get very clear on who you would want to be. What does the ideal version of you look like? How does that person act and feel? Be very meticulous and detailed in this process.

Nothing in your life will ever change, unless you change the way you see yourself. You will never go further than the limits of the person you see yourself as, and your behaviour will always fall in line with your identity.

Build core confidence

Confidence is essential for influencing others because it establishes trust, credibility, and emotional stability—three pillars that make people more open to being guided or persuaded. When someone projects confidence, others subconsciously interpret it as a sign of competence and reliability, which makes them more likely to follow their lead or accept their perspective.

Confidence communicates certainty and self-assurance. People naturally place more trust in someone who appears composed and clear about their message. In leadership and communication, confidence signals that the person has conviction and self-belief, making others more receptive to their ideas. When you are confident, it creates an atmosphere of psychological safety and people feel more secure around a calm, assured presence. Let’s not forget that emotions are contagious, so when someone speaks confidently, the listeners begin to feel confident too, reinforcing influence through emotional mirroring. Confidence is key for influence, because it’s the emotional signal that tells others: I am steady, reliable, and worth following. It bridges trust, clarity, and inspiration, the psychological foundations that make influence effective and lasting.

It’s important to note however, that this isn’t something you should try to fake. People have an incredible built-in radar and can sense when confidence is an act. Our brains and emotions are wired to detect incongruence between appearance and inner state. Genuine confidence isn’t about projecting perfection; it’s about embodying honesty, calmness, and self-trust.

‘Building core confidence’ suggests that we need to take action, it’s not just a feeling we wake up with and it certainly isn’t something you have to be born with. It can absolutely be developed. Confidence is a result, so you have to make sure that the input is correct and consistent. Taking action despite fear rather than waiting to feel ready is what will build your confidence. What most people don’t realise is that it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing approach. If you are struggling with public speaking for example, start with small challenges (speaking for 60 seconds in a meeting) then gradually scale up (presentations, then larger stages). This builds proof, tangible evidence of your capabilities that your brain cannot argue with. Another important action you can take regularly, is documenting every success, no matter how small, to counter self-doubt with concrete evidence.

Confidence can be hard to master because it requires handling adversity repeatedly until resilience becomes your default. Our mind is wired to avoid discomfort and to always gravitate towards the familiar, making it hard to step out of our comfort zone. Managing your mind is there for the most important step you can take if you truly want to become confident. Taking action despite feeling fearful is what will propel you forwards. Our mind is like an overprotective mother, always on the lookout for what could potentially harm us. Of course, being safe and surviving is important but within reason. Speaking up at work hasn’t resulted in death for many years, it’s really not as life threatening as our mind would have us believe. As with most things, we have to find the balance and take calculated risks.

One of the most important aspects when it comes to building lasting confidence is that it has to come from us and not stem from external sources. Core confidence requires internal validation rather than external approval. You have to take responsibility for your own emotional state rather than depending on others to make you feel worthy or good enough. Identifying and replacing self-defeating thoughts with empowering narratives, is a non-negotiable. Recognizing that lasting confidence must come from self-acceptance rather than just achievements or others' opinions is incredibly important.

We’ve all had people around us growing up who were less than supportive, perhaps even made us feel completely unworthy but that’s an old narrative that needs to change. Others often project their insecurities onto us and regardless what happened to you in the past, it’s now your responsibility to be your own hero and save yourself.

It can be challenging to become an expert in a subject, to be the best at something, or to feel truly confident, so here’s a shortcut! Before you focus on a specific skill or area you want to be great at, focus on knowing yourself, getting a very clear understanding of who you are. Become incredibly aware of your own inner workings and aspirations. When you are out and about in the world, there’s a good chance that you will meet someone who has more knowledge on quantum physics than you. There is surely someone who studied renaissance art more than you have and would know more, but absolutely no one, not even your own mother should be able to say: “I know you better!”

Once you’ve become very clear on who you are, what you want, you’ve set your boundaries and what your guiding principles and values are in life, it becomes easier to branch out and develop skills. You now have a strong core foundation and powerful sense of self, and can identify as someone who embraces improvement. So, when you do encounter someone who is better at something, you can lean into your curious side, the person who is ready to learn and grow. Focus on the opportunity to always improve rather than scrutinising yourself for what you don’t yet know. Be open and receptive.

Do not wait for permission, own yourself!

We’ve seen how some of the stories and narratives we carry from our childhood are unempowering, and often holding us back but it’s not enough to change old beliefs. Most adults often wait for some sort of permission to do what they truly want, due to deep-rooted psychological reasons tied to approval seeking, low self-trust, and societal conditioning. Many of us have internalized from childhood or past experiences that external validation is necessary to feel worthy or safe enough to pursue our desires. When someone has a fragile sense of their own value, they seek others’ approval to feel validated. This external permission gives temporary emotional safety but weakens intrinsic confidence and autonomy. The so-called approval-seeking behaviour can become ingrained, shaped by childhood experiences like trauma, neglect, or overly critical caregivers. Even as adults we may unconsciously believe that our judgment is insufficient and rely on others to give the "go-ahead". Waiting for permission often masks deeper fears of making mistakes or being judged negatively. The permission serves as a protective "signal" that it's safe to act without risking social or personal consequences. We inherently all want to be liked, but at what cost? Always seeking approval from others isn’t a sustainable way of living a happy life.

Once you’ve understood and accepted yourself, own who you are! As long as your behaviour and way of life isn’t harmful to others around, embrace your unique abilities and personality. Anyone can learn programming skills, how to build a house or to play the piano, but no one will ever be like you.

Our power lies in our uniqueness and way of thinking. When you embrace who you are with all your quirks and edges, when you are truly authentic, you become magnetic. By genuinely expressing yourself, emotionally connecting to others, and having a confident presence, you will naturally draw people in and inspire trust. Influencing others depends on conviction and credibility earned through authentic, clear communication, empathetic connection, and again, a confident presence. So, if you want to influence others in your life, start by working on yourself to emanate power and persuasion.