How you treat Earth is a reflection of you

The attached blog talks about why one should treat the environment well and the first reason is that it’s a reflection of your personality.  Here are some things your behavior could be saying.  This is only just to get you thinking.

Do you litter?  Think recycling is stupid?  Stick your gum anywhere but the garbage?  These may signify immaturity, rebelliousness and maybe also laziness.  Not taking time to separate your trash, or walk items to the trash shows you’re either expecting someone else to pick up after you or don’t care what others think.  Not caring about the place you live is unattractive because it ultimately says you don’t care about anyone but yourself.

Do you keep the water on while brushing your teeth?  Hose down your walkway instead of sweeping it?  These may signify disregard for the needs of others or a lack of self-importance.  Thinking that anything you do to help the environment really won’t help is an incorrect assumption.  We are only one person but we can have a huge impact on life and the world.  Think about the life of Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King, Jr. as just two of many examples of a single person doing something far greater than themselves.  Don’t think only about how it impacts you right now but think about how it could impact everyone around you, your children, your nieces and nephews one day when they’re having children of their own.  Water is a precious resource that needs to be treated as such.

Basically, love and respect Earth in a manner in which you’d want to be treated.  Not just today but every day.

Are you a social media slut?

There are references to this online but no real definition of it that I could find.  So, this is my attempt to define it, your relationship with social media and help you determine if you’re a social media slut.

I was inspired by this because I had read about an article talking about emotional sluts.  These are people who basically share far too many intimate details with someone who doesn’t want to hear them.  This leaves the listener with some basic options; either walk away or share far less detail back with the slut. Option one makes the listener look like an inconsiderate jerk and option two, in turn causes the slut to share even more information than the listener ever cared to know.  When the listener doesn’t return the favor of details, the slut feels upset and betrayed by “a friendship” that was really never there to begin with.  Emotional vampire is probably another way to look at it.  The slut literally sucks all of the life out of a possible friendship by laying burden after burden down on someone without thinking about the consequences, until it’s too late.  Then the slut feels burned by someone when in reality, the slut just burned themself.

So, back to social media sluts.  These are people who share their every intimate detail with everyone for the sake of highlighting one’s own success to garner praise, failures to garner sympathy and problems that warrant someone else’s fix.  They rarely, if ever, use social media to connect on a personal level because in the end it’s all about them.  This does not apply to just Facebook, but every Digg, Foursquare, Tweet, video post, etc. imaginable.  It’s like someone who used to call you on the phone, talk about themselves for an hour and if you were lucky, maybe ask how you were doing before hanging up.  Then, when they find they’re fired from their job because that crude comment they made about their boss made it’s way back to their boss, a friend de-friends them without a clue as to why or some other mishap happens, they wonder why things like this keep happening to them.  Some things don’t need to be shared.  Some things don’t need to be made public and some people just haven’t learned how to separate detail from intimate detail.  So, if you know of a social media slut, feel free to send this along to them as a small clue to say, “Pssst, this kinda describes you and yes, you’re pretty annoying.  You may want to take a look at what you’re doing before you make your next post.”   Maybe it will help save a relationship with a friend, partner, sibling, co-worker or someone else.  More importantly, it may just save this person from themselves.  

The Positive of Not Missing Something

People talk about what they miss constantly, but on occasion people will talk about things that they do not miss.  When we talk about the things we miss, we’re naturally seeking out a explanation or expressing an emotion.  When we talk about what we don’t miss, we’re validating what is true within ourselves which gets us closer to obtaining what it is we want in our own life.  I’ve had clients discuss what about their ex they don’t miss and it helped them conclude that they were truly over that relationship.  It wasn’t until they really expressed what they didn’t miss that they began to realize without a doubt, that the relationship was over, that they were now happy with where they were personally and that they could move forward happily within their own life with no regret.  It works for anything in your life.  

Take me as an example. I moved away from my home city of Milwaukee in 1998.  I know I would be absolutely miserable living there.  I don’t miss anything about it, to be quite honest besides my family who I love very much.  I was not in love with my home city and by the age of 17 I knew I had to get out.   I would stare at the skyline longing to live in a bigger city.  I never lived downtown which was deemed “unsafe” for so many years growing up, so it didn’t become a natural place for me to go when I visited.  I like to be in the middle of action with the ability to retreat when I need to.  Knowing what I don’t miss has allowed me to find happiness in my own life and make good choices moving forward.  Think about the things in your life that you don’t miss and then reflect upon how those things have contributed to your happiness in your life now.

The Hierarchy of Proper Communication

With so many different methods of communicating available to us through technology, it’s easy to always choose what is most convenient.  This also can make things more complicated in our lives.  It wasn’t that long ago when the telephone, a letter or an in-person conversation were the only means one could get in contact with another person.  If you think back a bit further, telegrams were the e-mail of their time since they could be sent more quickly than by mail.  I once saw an SOS-style telegram of a birth announcement to a new father who was based on a submarine during a war.  All of these methods had pretty equal weight in terms of their ability to communicate important information. 

So, do all forms of communication carry equal weight?  I do not believe so.  Let me rephrase that.  I do believe there are appropriate means for communicating certain items over others.  I also believe many people have adopted an “anything goes” approach.  There is a hierarchy of communication methods I will try to explain.

Lets start with the phone.  Our phones have since turned into mini computers, so we can do more than talk on them if we choose to do so.  We can text, instant message and even e-mail from them in addition to talk on them.  Like a computer, this provides advantages such as flexibility to reach more people faster, ability to respond when available, instant delivery, not having to talk to someone if you don’t want to, and using shorthand to communicate to name a few off of the top of my head.  Because phones are portable and can also be used to talk on, you can use these other non-verbal ways to communicate in places where it may be too loud to talk or require silence (such as a concert, movie, meetings or the library) while saving “minutes”.  

Technology also provides disadvantages such as not being able to hear or see the emotion with which someone speaks, not hearing the tone with which things are typed and not knowing the intent with which someone is writing.  All things non-verbal, which are to me the most important things we communicate, are lost.  What’s written may be inadvertently miswritten to convey something that was not intended, what’s written gets misconstrued, feelings are hurt and a disagreement arises over something that could have been avoided if the conversation would have happened either in person, by phone or even video chat.  I’ve experienced this in both my personal and professional life and it’s truly uncomfortable and preventable.

Here is how I see the hierarchy of communication starting with the fundamentals and working upward into ancillary modes for communicating.  The fundamentals are those ways to communicate which set the foundation for all communication thereafter.  If you can’t talk to each other in person in a successful manner, it’s less likely you’ll be able to write what you want to convey and not be misinterpreted.  I’ll explain further.

The fundamentals of communication include the ways to communicate in which content or emotions can be conveyed without limits.  So, at the base of fundamentals is in-person conversation.  Nothing trumps this interaction because you can say what you need to say, make eye contact, see the other person’s reaction and hear what they say and how they say it.  If you cannot have good in-person communication with someone the rest of your communication will suffer.  I believe video chatting is a suitable replacement for this provided you have a sufficient internet connection.  It’s talking face to face but not sitting literally across from each other.  I use it in my coaching sessions and find it to be an invaluable tool.

The next level up from this fundamental communication is what I’ll call a secondary fundamental and includes talking on the phone.  This is the only form of communication besides talking in person that allows you to listen to what the other person is saying while also hearing their tone and intonation.  Sorry emoticons just don’t cut it.

The following level is what I’ll call ancillary communication.  You cannot adequately sustain communication with someone just through these means without these first two fundamental levels.  This includes everything else:  writing a letter, IM, e-mail, text, Tweeting, Facebook messages and messaging, etc.  These should only be used when you have a relationship of successfully communicating through these first two channels.  Jokes can come across as jokes, serious tones will be read as such and there is less chance for misinterpretation.  In the beginning of a relationship, these are good tools for handling logistical things such as stating where you are, what time you’re leaving work, that you’re running late, traffic sucks, etc.  

What is unfortunate about society today is that people choose to use ancillary communication at the beginning of a relationship for non-logistical items.  Somehow they seem more convenient but in reality they’re more damaging.  So, the next time you feel the urge to just text someone that you’re having a bad day and need an ear, that you want to date other people, break-up or hold discussions as you get to know each other, all via non-fundamental ways just stop.  Go back to the fundamentals thinking about how that can save your relationship from unnecessary stress and hardship later.  It’s a small investment that will pay off big long-term.

How Relationships Change

Whether dealing with friendships, a romantic relationship or your family one thing is certain, relationships change.  Sometimes they change for the better.  You find a renewed sense of love within the relationship and that love strengthens it.  You may find support from someone when you lease expect it and you may be pleasantly surprised with how much others care when you thought you were alone.  I have seen relationships in my own life grow and change for the better.  I’m closer to some people than I’ve ever been, have found myself giving to people who I never thought needed me and have loved with a new passion that was once lost.  To give and receive in your relationships allows for them to flourish and grow.

Other times your relationships turn for the worst.  Maybe communication breaks down, you don’t feel heard or understood, or you don’t have the same expectations as the other person.   Maybe pain within the relationship was far too much to bear.  Sometimes, one person just takes from the other, which is draining.  Other times, both parties just come to an impasse and aren’t sure how to move forward so it just stops altogether. 

A relationship you start is never going to be the same throughout the course of it.  You have to be willing to let it change for better or for worse because we cannot control how the relationship evolves, only our reaction to what happens within it.   We all change and will continue to through our lives.  Be sure you keep those positive relationships in your life and terminate those that are no longer good for you.