Up until recently I was pretty convinced I wasn’t being ‘influenced’ at all but I’ve had a re-think.

I was listening to a podcast the other day and they were discussing how influencers are lying to us. One guy had apparently done a video showing how he is one of the ‘5am’ club people – getting up before it’s reasonable and doing it all before most of us even think about getting up. His video went on to show the times he did these wondrous things – yoga included if memory serves.

The problem was, a woman did some investigating and found out the times he was showing and the actual daylight he would have had just didn’t match up. He was trying to show he went outside and did journaling early in the day but the time he showed himself doing that would have been in total darkness. Caught. He wasn’t the only one.

There was a woman who did a video about how much she spent in a day. I think I saw a bit of that one and couldn’t figure out why there were so many coffee shop visits – doesn’t anyone make their own coffee at home anymore? Anyway, the super sleuth had a good look at the receipts the woman showed on the video – different dates and different times to the ones she was trying to pass off. Caught.

It seems to be quite a thing. We are constantly being lied to:

“Buy this super product and your life will be amazing”

“Get up at 5am and do yoga, journaling, a 5 mile run all before your family wake up and you’ll feel great and look like me”

“These super cool gadgets will make you wonder how you survived without them”

and on and on and on it goes.

It’s classed as a career now – sell crap nobody needs by pretending to live the life where you would need these crappy items.

I got quite annoyed by it, can you tell?

I was about to think ‘well I’m not influenced by anyone’ then stopped myself when I realised the following:

I declutter often

I am really trying with the whole home-making thing

I’m trying to make better food choices for me and my family and cook from scratch most of the time

I know that’s only 3 examples and it didn’t mean I had to buy anything but these came from listening to other people – podcasts, YouTube videos and the like. I don’t do the ego fanfare otherwise known as Instagram. Had a quick look – it was an InstaNo from me.

But it did make me wonder – what else do I do because I’ve been influenced by someone?

What things are we all doing because we’ve been influenced to do it? Surely not all influencing is bad, right? (Just don’t buy the crap!)