Affirmations are the practice of saying, well, affirmative or positive things about yourself, to yourself. They are kind of personal mantras. But they’re more of a mental shortcut that reflects your personal values. Things like ‘I approve of myself.’ ‘I am trying my best.’ Or ‘I am not addicted to my mobile phone’. All this is done with the hope that repeating those sentences will improve my perception of yourself.
Has saying positive things to myself helped me? Maybe. But then, as Goebbels and his media studies group puts it, repeating a lie 10 times makes it true. I still have negative thoughts about myself. But I soothe myself by counting the likes on my social media posts till my eyes glaze over.
‘Perception-verception can’t change your reality unless your actions lead to the change you want to see’, says my mother.
‘Good line, Ma, I’m posting it just now’.
Ma sighs. She is jealous that I’m on my way to becoming an influencer.Last week, ahead of the G20 summit, US-based think tank Pew Research Center released a study on India’s global image. The survey of 30,861 people from India and 23 other countries conducted in February-May states that seven out of 10 Indians believe that India has become a more influential nation than it was earlier. The thing that Indian media have played down is that only 28% of adults from 19 other nations have agreed with that sentiment. Please note that this Pew study was done before Chandrayaan-3 landed on the moon on August 23. If the survey was done after the landing, I’m sure every country would have said, ‘Yes, yes, all right. Super influential!’
Influence is a curious concept. Being influential is not an inherent quality. It is an effect you’re supposed to have on others. So, according to the Pew study, if the ones we are supposed to be influencing – people in other countries – say they don’t feel the influence, then is India actually influential?
Even though I affirm my position as an influencer by repeating it in meetings and online profiles, any business that may want to hire me to shill their goods on the internet knows that my actual influence is reflected in how much time my ‘followers’ spend on my page and how much they share my content.
This is why I defend the optimism of the 7 out of 10 Indians cited in the survey with the same vigour I defend my title as an influential influencer to my mother.
After 78 years of Independence and two days of G20, we don’t find too many people talking about us the way we want to be spoken about, even as they talk more about us than before. So, let’s just keep repeating how influential we are to ourselves. Repeating it enough times should do the trick.
But reality is a weird thing. It is apparently connected to our actions, and without the right actions, our various perceptions of influence ring hollow. No matter what RWA uncles and WhatsApp University PhDs say. It’s the kind of thing that Dale Carnegie left out in his epochal 1936 self-help book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, because he hadn’t yet heard about aforementioned Goebbels a continent away.
In the meantime, if you or anyone you know owns a business that is looking for an influencer to promote your stuff, I’m here. If you need to be convinced about my prowess as an influencer, this should suffice – 7 out of 10 of my followers on social media believe that I am more influential now today than I was before I wrote this column. This I have repeated to myself a few times, so you can be rest assured.
