Happy on Social Media

One of the tools I use to communicate more effectively on Facebook is Social Fixer. Its a web add on for chrome and other browsers. It empowers me to view a post and check mark the items I have already seen so that I do not scroll through them again.

It helps me to consciously view something and let it go and keep my social media feed fresh.

This empowers me more to then focus on the posts that I am compelled to respond to and instead of using the social que buttons, I write actual responses, comments, leave an image of myself or a video when i can't type.  Actual responses as opposed to social ques demonstrate communication both for the person that writes or leaves a response and for the person that reads the reply or views the image.

Social ques such as the like button or other emojis fuel disconnection and drive us to 'compare' how much attention we are getting or not getting with none of the positive connecting benefits of actual conversation.

I challenge you to work to identify a post that you can respond to every 5 posts on Facebook this week.  Don't endlessly scroll (another magnet for dissatisfaction with social media 'endless scrolling'), instead focus on replying with actual words. Connect with those friends or family or acquaintances that have made the effort to open up and share something.

Pick the ones that resonate the most, but don't look for the best and only respond to those.  Choose the best of the next 5!

Over time the more you communicate and filter your feed the more connected you will feel and your friends too. The more positive feedback you each receive, the happier you will feel engaging on social media.

We do not always have the right words when our friends or family experience suffering. We might not always be in the same place that they are. Our emotions might be taking us in the opposite direction even.

That's ok. We are ok. We do not have to react the same way. They do not have to react the same way we do.

We may not have the right words, and we can learn to practice simply listening, acknowledging their thoughts and feelings and demonstrating this by repeating back to them some of their words, acknowledging by showing them that we heard them.

In addition, I have found it helpful when I experience grief or when I witness someone else suffering, growing or healing through the grief process, to revisit what the cycle of grief might look like. https://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/

We each see and witness friends and loved ones in need, struggling, suffering and sometimes needing actual help.  Sometimes we can help directly and sometimes we just don't have the stuff to help on that specific day. We're just human and social media can enable each of us to grow our 'support networks' a little further and get help from those friends that can help at that time. There's a flip side to this as well.

Sometimes we need help and we need to recognize that not all of our friends can be there for us when we feel that we need them.  Maybe not even the friends that we have helped in the past.

Each scenario is OK. Its normal. 

Changing things up for this Thursday and going personal, will resume our normally scheduled social media tips to stay health, sane and work towards being happier with our next episode!

Video of Mr Mustache the cat yowling a month or two back before this incident https://youtu.be/_biVESwFVVc

Who is rooting for you when the chips are down? Whose acknowledging your progress when you make it through tough times?

When are you paying it forward and rooting for your own friends? Who could you express some gratitude to today and thank them for being there for you or simply witnessing your challenges?

Good morning! I'm a little bottled up, keeping some things close to my vest for very good reasons  ....

And

Even though they are good reasons, its also triggering some writers block.

I'm working on finding better ways to apply the brakes to some of the wheels (sharing activities) in my head and remain open to share the rest.

How are you? Where are you at this morning?

Are you approaching conversations thinking people are out to get you?
Do you think people that you encounter on social media are trying to harm you directly or harm the world and therefore you indirectly as a person of this world?

How do you feel about the conversations you are having on social media? Are you even talking with anyone?

What if you could open up and connect with people and realize and choose to know that they are doing the best they can trying to make things better. Their direction may be different than your own. After all people are not the same.

We ARE each very different. Its no wonder that we might each do things very differently.

When we choose to approach conversations in real life or on social media, knowing that people are different and will approach things different...

AND!

We choose to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are trying to be positive, open up and share some helpful insight, we can be grateful and choose to pursue the idea exercising curiosity.

We might learn something new. We might affirm a lesson learned or find a more effective way to apply a lesson and be successful.

We just need to let go of the idea that we are the center of the universe, not everything is about us. We can realize that not all people we interact with are trying to do us harm, nor do the world harm.

We can connect and learn and build trust with people doing the best they can with the experiences life has granted them.

Some Helpful Articles on Positive Intent

https://lifeshowyouliveit.com/assume-positive-intent/
https://medium.com/@BlairOutLoud/3-benefits-in-my-life-from-assuming-positive-intent-8c2024400d8 

There's no magic Facebook post that solves all of your problems when you share it.

There ARE some great things that you can do to prune and tune up your personal Facebook experiences.

1. Pausing before 'reacting' to a facebook post, don't hit the emoji or re-share something just to spread the outrage. Weigh whether or not you can really do something, today, with this knowledge (or not)
2. Weeding out the 'Outrage Porn' news sources
3. Blocking viral violence videos at the source
4. Unfollowing for 30 days or for a longer term that friend or family member that is overloading your feed with information you can't act on right now
5. Spreading the word to your social media friends to help them tune and prune their experiences (and share less garbage with you!)

It's not bad if you take the expectations out. Are you feeling let down by others, by yourself? Are other people 'judging' you too much? How about you them?

Expectations can creep into our heads and build up a funk like rotten eggs, lets expunge them by getting rid of the 'should statements'

Continuing on from Episode 7 where we discussed Emotionally Managing Expectations, today we talk tie it all together and start to look at consequences.

Boundaries imply a consequence. If someone crosses this point, a sequence of events will unfold.  

The point of a healthy boundary is not to control someone else. it is simply a way that we communicate the choices we will make following an event or sequence of events.

So we've talked about witnessing the actions of people on social media without taking on emotions for their perceived failure to meet 'our' expectations of them.

We can be objective and we can still enforce healthy boundaries, even when we observe hate speech or racist activity.

Nothing about this is easy.

However, we can learn to witness and act. We can choose to set and communicate healthy boundaries too. We can also simply act without communicating.  We have free will and no obligation to telegraph our actions.

Healthy boundaries with people that we DO have relations with can include communicating our intent.

After we define ourselves and who are trusted friends are (see episode 5), we move next towards figuring out what we expect from others. Our expectations drive our feelings and what we feel when someone does or 'fails' to do what we expect.

With an exposure to so many more friends and acquaintances and total strangers via social media, we need to learn to set healthy boundaries with our expectations.

We can learn to observe and witness that actions of others, without 'Expecting' them to act as we deem they should. After all, these are not our 'slaves.' We do not control these people. They have free will. We have our free will. When we set 'expectations' we are setting ourselves up for emotional sabotage, and we can fix or change that!

Welcome to Monday and Happy on Social Media, episode Being Bad.
Monday's are for connecting. Today, I'm sharing an atypical story of where I am as I attempt to come up with a 'story' and ultimately do not succeed, instead telling the story of failing to tell a story. How very Seinfeldian.

And yet, I am here and I have pushed through to get this episode out there, and maybe just maybe you can connect with that too.

We'll continue on with our Happy on Social Media series on Boundaries with Episode 7 tomorrow!
Episode 7 will cover Emotionally Managing Expectations in life and on Social media. If you missed Episode 5 Defining ourselves and our circles of trust, I encourage you to check that out as well. 5, 6, 7 and 8 are part of a mini series on Healthy Boundaries on social media.

Defining Ourselves and our Circle of Trust Boundaries Series Ep0005 Happy on Social Media. This is the first in a 4 part series.