There’s something about pink frosted sugar cookies that make people smile. It’s kind of a proven fact. In my baking life, those cookies are the ones I get the most comments on. Period. They’re also some of the most time consuming to make.
The dough usually has to be chilled. Then rolled. Then cut. Then baked. Then cooled. Then frosted. Then sprinkled. LOTS of steps.
Years and years ago, one of my college roommates, Becky, made the BEST sugar cookies for Valentine’s Day. And because she was much less selfish with her recipes than I am, she let me have it. She wrote it out for me on two 3×5 cards (front and back – LOTS of steps) in her very distinctive handwriting and even put those cute little Mrs. Grossman’s red teddy bear stickers on it.
I still have it.
I still use it.
(I still keep it to myself. But that’s not the point – today, at least).
The point is, she didn’t even remember she gave it to me. It is a jewel in my current (and imaginary) recipe crown and when I saw her many years later and gave her credit for it, she had no idea what I was talking about.
Isn’t that fascinating?
I was trying all this time to make my sugar cookies as good as I remembered hers to be all those years ago and she had no idea. She probably hadn’t thought about them since.
She influenced my cookie baking (and many, many other things) and she didn’t even know it.
That’s the thing about influence.
Vocabulary.com says influence is “the power to have an important effect on someone or something. If someone influences someone else, they are changing a person or a thing in an indirect but important way. Sometimes a person who influences another doesn’t [even] intend to have any effect.”
As I’m writing this, I’m about a third of the way into my last 100 days of my 31 year employment as a teacher and counselor in my state’s public education system. At the suggestion of a brilliant friend, I decided that before leaving and venturing off into new territory I would reach out to 100 people who were influential in my career to thank them for that influence.
I’m nowhere near done with my list yet – and I haven’t, and don’t expect to, hear back from everyone I reach out to. But some of the responses I have received so far have surprised me.
One from just yesterday said “to know I had an influence on you back then is such an amazing feeling.” She had no idea.
Influence: changing a person or a thing in an indirect but important way.
I can’t wait to hear about the ways influence is impacting you.
…Right after I grab another sugar cookie.
