Follow you, Follow me
5 Aug
Being fairly new to the world of social media I have felt a little like Alice in Wonderland the past few months!
The learning curve has been steep and intense, but there’s also been an equally intense feeling of satisfaction that I’m becoming accustomed to.
One of my passions in life has been travelling; I love to meet people and learn about other cultures and this relates to social media in that,
“Social media allows you to talk to the world without having to travel the world.” – Scott Stratten.
I have connected with people travelling in Nepal, living in Australia, bloggers all over the US and even right here in my own backyard, Vancouver!
Making these connections feeds my soul.
If you’ve spent any time at all on Twitter you’ve most certainly heard of this trend called Follow Friday (a.k.a. #FF).
It’s about sharing connections, promoting others and acknowledging – announcing even, that these are people worth following.
Now, this could look like a networking event gone wild (imagine a virtual passing around of business cards and schmoozy conversation – ugh).
But here’s what I love – every Friday, Scott Stratten (@unmarketing to his gazillion Twitter followers!) sends out a Tweet reminding us all to #FF (follow in English) fewer people, and include a reason for doing so.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” - Maya Angelou
I want to share with you, some of these amazing people that I’ve “met” online. People that have reached out, taken time to offer advice and feedback, inspired me with their writing, and made me feel welcomed and accepted on numerous occasions.
I want YOU to get to know these people too.
In my typical Aries/Mediterranean/first-born fashion, I took a good idea and put my spin on it…
Follow Friday: Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things
You might be thinking, “How rude, these people aren’t ordinary!”
But here’s the thing…they are. And so are you. And so am I.
Here’s the context I’m working with:
What if extraordinary is not an identity, but rather an experience?
See, if we keep on thinking that some people are extraordinary (but I’m/you’re not) where does that leave us? Most likely feeling inadequate, not good enough, and a whole host of limiting beliefs.
Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa – all people we’ve labelled extraordinary – each had a dream and every day they got up and did what they had to do. They kept their word to fulfill on that dream.
They kept. Their. Word.
It wasn’t magic, and they didn’t have some rare extraordinary gene. Danielle LaPorte recently wrote on this idea and I knew there was more for me to explore further.
Ordinary people. Doing extraordinary things.
Thinking of it any other way is disempowering and you can kiss your dream good bye.
So, I’m not just going to Tweet about these people I follow every Friday. I’m going to shine some deva lovin’ on them.
Every Friday, I’m going to introduce you to someone who’s caught my eye – maybe for who they are in the world, maybe for the difference they make, maybe for how they inspire me.
There’s no formula for this part; I just wait for my heart to be touched in some way.
There’s a line from an old Genesis song that says,
“right here by my side if ever I need you.”
That’s kind of how I’m starting to feel about these people.
And definitely why I follow them.
. 
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