Session 6

In life, you will meet many people; some will encourage and help you and others that will discourage or even distract you. These people will eventually play a part in molding your character, values and life principles. Can you identify the voices around you? “Voices” refers to those that are able to influence or make an impact on your actions/thoughts. E.g. Parents, friends, or even people who you do not know. Sometimes these “voices” can influence you without you being aware of it.

Question: As a student, what are the “voices” that surround you? What can you do to prevent those “voices” that can influence you negatively? Go to the website below, complete the quiz, and find out if you are the one influencing others.

The Heat's On - The pressure is all around you, but you're dealing with it.
Based on your answers, you're probably feeling some pressure. You can start by recognizing the influences in your life and trusting your instincts. If you decide something's not for you, go with that. Your choices matter so try to make decisions that you can stand by and not feel bad about later.

A great example is our friends. We spend about eight hours in school. School is a place where kids interact and learn together. In this eight hours a lot of things can happen. I feel that friends have more power to influence you as they are the same age and really play a major role. Its monkey see monkey do. So, we will pick up whatever our friends do very fast because everyone is doing it, and you do not want to stand out. We should only follow the positive influences by our friends.

Another is our parents. They are with us everyday. A child whose parent smokes is 4 times more likely to also pick up smoking. A child who listens to his/her parents music is likely to be a musician. A child who is often brought to a swimming pool by his/her parents will probably be a swimmer. Children whose parents are a bad influence should be very careful.

Overall, we should be very careful not to let ourselves be influenced negatively by avoiding temptation. Staying away from bad influences will assist greatly.