People and their influence in our life goals

This week two articles made me think about how we are influenced by other people and let their opinions and moods influence our happiness.

One was in the New York Times and explained how strangers may cheer you up. This was not so surprising for me. It's really curious how the people who make us happier are our neighbors, coworkers, bosses, people we spend time with or who influences our environment, more than our significant other.

Maybe this happens because we see less our loved ones than this acquaintances, and therefore we feel more their happiness.

Also, an article about how to have your best year ever through effective goal setting in eHow.com really was useful when I started thinking about what I want to accomplish in the year to come. But it was step 8 and 9 that make me think how positive people help us accomplish our goals and with negative people we sometimes

don’t share our goals, because we fear that those that we entrust with them will convince us that we are being silly, and that we will ultimately give up on our goals solely based on someone else’s opinion.

Completely true. I have read numerous posts about how we hide, for example, that we are on a diet, or changing our habits, or trying to complain less and do more, well, any kind of goal we have, because if they knew, our FRIENDS would feel threaten by this and immediately woudl tell us we are exaggerating and "one hamburger won't hurt you' or 'criticizing others is just fun and doesn't damage anyone' or 'complaining is part of being human' or any other rationalization so they don't feel so bad about their lack of change.

We are not asking them to change, but somehow they feel pressured to do it and, if they can't, they attack our decision. Geez, really, it's not about you, people!

Here in Mexico I think the situation is worse that what is described in both articles. We even have a story about it. A fisherman has two buckets with crabs. One was covered with a steel sheet and a rock and the other wasn't. When someone asked him why the difference between the two buckets, the fisherman explained that in the covered one he had crabs from international waters and if he would have left the bucket open, they would had helped one another to climb and run away, but in the uncovered one he had Mexican crabs and when one of them tried to climb, the others pulled him so he could not run away.

It's a sad story, but certainly I have seen people do this. I have had friends who, instead of cheering me up, they said 'you aren't going to be able to (put here any goal I shared with them)'.

Also, related with the article that says that other people cheer us up, this is increasingly difficult in this country. I have seen more and more people who doesn't think in their neighbors, coworkers or employees, who do things like turn up the volume of their music no matter how they bother others, who steal their employees ideas in their faces and show off with their bosses as if they were theirs, who drive aggressively and recklessly even if they put kis in danger. I don't know how much this happens in other countries, but here I think is happening more and more and not only in the big cities, everywhere.

So, the first goal I have to accomplish (from this moment, not in 2009) is to learn to ignore this people and concentrate in the ones who inspire me, either in 'real life' or with their blogs or in the Internet.