As long as other people are influencing your thoughts, there is nothing you can do about your fate because your fate is in the hands of other people. The moment you feel free from any kind of foreign influence, you are ready to take guard of your own life. For a better explanation of these concepts do go through Mastery or The Laws of Human Nature.
The current book is linked to history and the present at the same time and it has the potential to govern the future as well. Richard Poe should be appreciated in this one as narration is a very important tool to preach the kind of message which is present in this book. The effort of the narrator has made the concepts of this book easy to understand even for a common man.