I saw a post on Facebook today from a white woman who has been very vocally in favor of the All Black Lives Matter movement. And in of itself, that would be great. But in the process of being pro black American, she’s also just being mean, harsh, and critical of people who don’t respond the way she does.
This post is going to be short. It’s my small contribution for the day to people everywhere. I could have chosen to NOT write this post, because it’s really going to be too brief to matter. No one will share links to it claiming it’s a comprehensive guide or the most robust resource available.
If there’s any positive I can take from this pandemic, it’s that the mandatory shifts in behavior have jarred me out of my comfort zone enough to allow me to see missed personal opportunities.
I spent two weeks searching Twitter for regular people talking about self-awareness, and you know what? Basically everyone talking about self-awareness is selling something.
Does that surprise you? It does and it doesn’t surprise me. It does, because I wondered what other words regular people are using when they talk about being self-aware. But it doesn’t surprise me because no one I know actually talks about self-awareness.
During the stay-at-home orders, it’s easier to see which side of the emotion sharing fence people live on. More than ever, neighbors and friends are calling each other to check in and see how the people in their lives are doing.
There’s always a certain kind of guy who calls me “Buddy”. He’s usually casual, intentionally easy to get along with. He’s often the magnet that draws other people in to hang out. Whether they’re drinking buddies, workout buddies, golfing buddies, fishing buddies, fantasy football buddies, work buddies, whatever.
It’s easy to start a blog. Anyone can do it. So easy, in fact, that I’ve started no less than 37 different blogs over the past 14 years. Yes, you read that right. THIRTY SEVEN. To give that number context, every year I rediscover at least one blog I had completely forgotten.
How much time have you spent doing what other people think you should do? Hours? Weeks? Years?
I got into blogging early. It was 2005 and MySpace was still humming. I caught wind of the notion that some early adopters were monetizing their blogs with ads. Imagine a world in which you blurt out the randomness you were already going to share with SOMEBODY, only you get paid to do it!
Do you feel like nobody is listening? Answer this question for me: If you were invited to a talk show and asked to speak on the topic of your choice, what would you choose? You can just answer it for yourself or you can drop me a comment below to let me know.
Selling has its own rightful place in our lives, but it’s not appropriate as the foundation of friendship or social interaction. It doesn’t matter what “your thing” is, but if you talk to your friends and closer acquaintances about “your thing” as though it’s the thing everyone should prioritize, you’re already in the process of losing influence with people without realizing it.