Written May 16, 2013
My proposition to all of you this week was to recognize the beauty in all forms of connecting, specifically social media forms and live-and-in-person forms, and focus on doing only one at a time. My theory is that we water down the positive qualities of each by mixing the two and we enhance the essence of each by giving our full attention instead. You can read the full blog, Wanna Chat?, here.
My friend, Cheryl Gardiner, took this concept a step further in her follow-up blog, Connecting Consciously and With Heart. She purports that it’s not only focusing on the specific type of connection, but consciously opening your heart with each connection with the intent of helping, supporting and nurturing each other. It is about so much more than the numbers of people with whom we connect. Rather, it’s about the intensity and purpose of each connection.
A lot of information, right? In fact all of this connecting talk has reminded me that another critical aspect of being able to purposefully connect with others in our lives is to take the time to connect inwardly. Get a little quiet, shut out the outer world, set down the phone, turn off email, and…gasp!…just be with YOU.
We’ve all heard of a ‘media holiday’, right? I occasionally take a media holiday just to recenter so I can face the onslaught of world information from a better vantage point. I don’t go live in a cave, but I do avoid newspapers, online and real, and I don’t watch the news for whatever period of time I need to recenter. (I do have Joel on retainer to alert me if anything happens that requires my presence as a good citizen as well as to avoid severe embarrassment during a dinner conversation as in, “I’m sorry, but who is this Sandy person who came to New York and caused so much destruction” or “Gosh, where is Fiscal Cliff and why are we so worried about falling over it?” And so on.)
Anyway, my point is that the hustle and bustle of the outer world can take its toll and clutter me up to the point that I no longer can discern what to do with all of the incoming information nor am I of any use to anyone in helping address it.
Along the same lines of this media holiday is my self imposed social-media break. When I ventured further into this venue earlier this year I was a little worried that I would get engulfed by it, meaning it would eat away all of my creative time and my connections would get watered down. So I set a boundary for myself right away, that is, Monday through Friday I do my social-media thing and weekends are social-media free. This means I don’t tweet, post, reply, like, comment, or repin on Saturday or Sunday. I focus inwardly – on my home, my family, and me.
So far, so good. I seem to come back on Monday refreshed and ready to engage again.
Now, this is my boundary. What is yours, if anything, is yours. My only suggestion is that you consider whatever it may take for you to maximize your ability to open your heart and intentionally focus on your various connections in order to make them more powerful and purposeful.
