The truth about following people is this: you will be let down. You will always be let down. My Mom is a good role model for certain things, she is not for many others. Sometimes I purposely do what she does--and she gets mad. Why? Because she knows it's wrong. I used to do the same with my dad, brother, sister, significant other; but I realized you don't need to lower yourself and perform the actions they do in an attempt to help them see what they're doing wrong.

By far, the hardest thing in the world to learn, is that people must be willing to do things themselves--that you nor I can make  them. We have had efforts to show them the right way of doing things--but oftentimes they truly already know. People know it's bad to drink, bad to smoke. People know they should eat breakfast in the morning. People know gambling is a bad habit. Their will to change, however, is what is lost.

The reason that will is lost is because of one underlying truth to all these situations: a lack of dependence on oneself. People begin to rely heavily on these different things, bad habits, etc. and forget that Self-Reliance is the first and foremost, the it and all there should be.

Understand the goodness in you, the natural abilities you have and the reliance you need on Yourself. The You that is capable of overcoming anything is divine and is God and is Good and is beautiful and rightly so. Don't follow people. Follow goodness.