Winning friends and influencing people!

A few years ago, my college BFF's and I traveled to Southern California over spring break. It was fantastic. It was cold but we still went to the beach and dressed up and ate Chick-Fil-A and acted crazy. There was one picture where I'm hugging a tree and then Abby joined me on the other side and Diana jumps in to and Jenn's caption was something like "Melissa apparently knows how to win friends and influence people."

I have lived the majority of my life caring so much about what people think. Let me emphasize the "so much." I still spend a lot of time devoted (not on purpose) to replaying conversations and situations trying to figure out what I meant and what they meant and why I said and why they said... And the list could go on and on. I am beyond analytical. In college, I finally found friends where I could just be me. It was a relief, it was freeing, and it was real.

See.. The only way to win friends that you will keep and influence people is to just be yourself. No one else can do that! Today I met two students, from a couple of years ago, for lunch. They were asking how this year was going and what's going on with the students and my life in general. Then they began to talk about they life in 8th grade and how they would come and talk to me ALL the time. They would... They asked for advice, asked about my life, and knew me personally. They saw and lived my happiness, bad moods and emotional wrecks and they still loved having me. The beauty of it all was that I was just me, there was no need for a cover up or a make believe scenario. They just know me. I love that.

One of the speakers at Hope's student ministry talked about this topic in a message I listened to a while back and said we need to stop worrying about what other people think and focus on what God thinks. When we do that, we are truly us. We are no one else and no one else is us.

Be free and be you! Then you truly get the opportunity to influence the people around you because you're not pretending. It's worth it, I promise!

Will you do this with me?? -Melis