Our worldview is greatly influenced by our social media feeds. It's a small but highly influential collection of voices that shapes our outlook on life with its pressures and points of view.
Without a doubt, we are the product of our associations.
By changing everyone we follow, we could change our entire lives. But since we would probably never do that, here's the next best thing - a list of practices to improve our daily worldview:
1. Be released from the weird social obligation to follow people you would never otherwise follow.
2. Be released from the weird social obligation that you can't unfollow people.
3. Stop viewing your number of followers as a daily "stock-price"of your own personal value.
4. Remove the negative people from your feed and follow the positive people.
5. Follow the people who are several steps ahead of you in your field and learn from them.
6. Do more than follow the people you admire. Reach out and get to know them.
7. Look for the types of voices you need in your life and follow them even if they never follow you.
Wow Ben, this is an amazing post. Number 6 is what I did with you. Twitter has definitely been a double edged sword in my life. In some ways it has made me more insecure then ever (no matter what I do, someone in the world is doing something better), but in other ways it has brought friendships to me that I highly value that I would never have had without it.
Thanks for all you do Ben. Your an inspiration to me.
Posted by: Justin Lathrop | June 11, 2012 at 09:39 AM
Thanks for writing this. Set the people free!
Posted by: Jeff Dolan | June 11, 2012 at 09:44 AM
I think our focus on platform and doing the work has given us a humanistic mindset where we can fix our problems, which never works out for me too well. This is great practical advice and how to get beyond the prison of humanism. Thanks for sharing. I wrote a post with a similar take, but it's not practical at all :)
http://manofdepravity.com/2012/06/dont-do-the-work-be-unproductive/
Posted by: Tyler | June 11, 2012 at 09:53 AM
justin, feeling's mutual and i'm so glad you did.
thanks jeff!
and tyler great perspective
Posted by: Ben Arment | June 11, 2012 at 10:52 AM
YES! love this!
Posted by: Alece Ronzino | June 11, 2012 at 12:45 PM
This is such a great post, Ben, and certainly true of my own experience. Deciding to unfollow and unsubscribe from negative people has changed my mood in a lot of ways over the past year. I've realized that as a result, my own statuses and tweets are a lot less negative than they used to be. They're more focused on gratitude and professional interactions, too.
Posted by: bethany | June 11, 2012 at 01:00 PM
Excellent post, #6 is particularly important to me. thanks!
Posted by: Don McAllister | June 11, 2012 at 01:10 PM
great stuff, Ben
Posted by: charles stone | June 11, 2012 at 04:23 PM
This was beautiful. Thanks so much, Ben!
Posted by: Bianca | June 11, 2012 at 09:43 PM
thanks for the kind words...
Posted by: Ben Arment | June 12, 2012 at 10:10 AM
Wow...I think this article just got posted on the Twitter newsletter. Congrats Ben! Great post.
Posted by: charles hill | June 12, 2012 at 04:36 PM
Simple and very applicable. I started my "un-following" a long time ago. Glad to see I am not the only one. Love the piece about learing from those ahead of you. Very valuable!
Posted by: Jennifer Upton | July 29, 2012 at 01:08 AM