Impressionability

We are all more pliable than we like to think we are.  We like to think we can stand strong and be ourselves against the pressure of the status-quo, but when we step back, we realize that we give in much too often without even thinking.  When you have just moved to a new city, especially, the motivation is especially strong to find new friends and be accepted by the crowd.  Not just accepted, but admired.  You don't know these people, so you automatically suppose they must be something big and know what's cool.  Even fads, however silly we may know they are, appear extremely enticing when they are being displayed all around us.  Then we ask, can there be anything that wrong with them?  And the answer very often is 'no'.
I know I'm susceptible.  It doesn't even need to be a huge craze.  In a new town with only one friend (that is, within a six-hour drive), she showed me knitting and I threw myself into it.  Is there anything wrong with learning to knit?  Really, no.  But why did I do it?  Because my friend did.
I had a neighbor who wore a special style of clothes, and I thereafter showed an interest in that style and attempted to find some for myself.  Same story with another friend.  Everyone would say she was really beautiful, and she really was, plus she was older than me.  She didn't even show that much of a like for me, but when she started wearing all these loose tops, it was only after that that I started favorably noticing that style in the stores.
Again, nothing appears wrong with giving in on these issues.  But we need to think more deeply on who it is we're imitating.  If we get too easily into the habit of merely following, will we be able to say 'no' when our answer really matters?
I'm actually scared of where my impressionability will lead me.  I'm haunted by the possibility of answering yes or no at the wrong time.  Will I always be able to recognize what is bad?  Ephesians 5:1 says: "Be imitators of God, therefore..." I admit I'm actually frustrated with Paul for making it sound so easy!  He describes living with the same love that drove Jesus to die for us and simply says, "This is what's expected of you!"
But Jesus gives us a promise:
"I have made You [God the Father] known to them [the body of believers], and will continue to make You known in order that the love You have for me may be in them and I myself may be in them." (John 17:26)
That's a big promise!  But we know God always keeps those.  Didn't He keep the promise of a Messiah?