9 Days to Go: Turning 50! 50 GlowTips I’m sharing to Spread the Glow!
9 Days to go until I turn 50! So I’ve decided to share 50 GlowTips to Get Your Glow ON — one per day, in no particular order of importance and just as they come to me…
And here’s GlowTip 42: Are you connecting, or just collecting? *Meaningful connections* create more of the Good Stuff!
I’m not sure I understand the point of ‘collecting’ friends and connections — on social media, or even all the business cards we collect. People seem to be so busy ‘networking’, but not actually connecting with each other at all!
I’ve started calling it ‘Fakebook’ — so many people seem to be assuming some pretentious personality. I know how some of them actually speak in real-life, and they don’t even sound like themselves! They assume another voice of what they think is ‘the writer’, or ‘the enlightened one’ — and it’s ridiculous and a bit sad.
And a lot of the time people are just posting to impress — so we’re only seeing the highlight reel and not the out-takes! I thought one of my friends was having a wonderful time travelling around the world in great style — which she was. But she’d also been undergoing some horrible surgery — which she neglected to mention. Why not, I don’t know — we would all have wished her well. Social media loves outpourings of Group Love!
I don’t even know most of the people who are in my social networks. Some of them I’ve only met once. And some I’ve never met before. But I wish them Happy Birthday, I know how they celebrated and what they ate for lunch!
Often I’ve found myself at events where we’re tweeting at each other. But we could be standing next to each other — and not even realise! Because we don’t actually know each other at all. We’re not really ‘connected’!
I have people endorsing my work on LinkedIn who have never worked with me! And I’ve never heard of them or met them before. Most of this online networking seems to be complete BS!
I’d rather invest in real, meaningful relationships with people I actually know.
I look through my timeline and I keep asking myself why I should be interested in what a bunch of strangers, or even my ‘real’ friends are doing every day. And in truth — I’m really not!
It feels odd to be glimpsing into people’s lives — especially people I don’t know. And even though I know that they’re cooking pasta, or having cocktails on the beach — it doesn’t make us any closer!
It’s so weird to me that we pay more attention to arbitrary people’s lives — even those of our popular ‘celebrities’ and politicians — than we do to our own, or to the people we do truly love and who mean the most to us.
Liking a status is not the same as hearing a friendly voice at the end of the phone, or meeting with friends or colleagues face to face. The energy of real connection is totally different. Consideration and caring is a physical act, not a digital delivery!
I’m not knocking social media networking — I know it’s a helpful tool for friends and families who don’t live in the same town, to keep in touch. It’s also a great way to share information (as well as misinformation!).
But I’m all for less collecting of ‘friends’ and more connecting with friends. Because meaningful connections create more of the Good Stuff and Get our Glow ON!
