Does The Way You Twitter Cause You Stress?
by Marianna Paulson of Change of Heart Stress Solutions (@AuntieStress)
How to prevent yourself from becoming scrambled.
Anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes on Twitter recognizes that blue bird. And, like any bird, it began life as an egg. Fortunately, one that didn’t crack and end up scrambled!
Just as in life, there are stages of learning & growth on Twitter.
My invitation to Twitter came from that brilliant international branding bird @coffee_offline who said, “Just Do It! You’ll love it!.” (I’ll leave it to you to delve into her background!)
Admittedly, my initial thoughts were, “What am I going to do with this?” Fortunately, I know how to overcome those limiting thoughts. I recognized those triplets named Doubt, Impossibility & Fear, who are cousins to Stress. (Have your invitations to Twitter been ignored? Consider the possibility that the benefits were over-shadowed by one of the aforementioned emotions.)
Here are my observations & suggestions to help you on your way:
The follower affliction
“I have 3 gazillion followers.” “I’ve lost 2 followers!” This constant score-keeping (egg-counting?) may contribute to the one basket effect. The stress basket. Consider these questions: Does your self-esteem rise and fall on the number of followers you have? Do you feel like it’s a competition? Is it quality or quantity? Are you interacting or number-watching?
Become aware of what is going on internally as you watch the numbers. Remember that your body is constantly reacting to your thoughts and emotions. The physical and chemical adjustments that are being made affect your emotional, mental and physical health. If your response to “Oh” is “Oh, that’s interesting!” versus, “Oh Oh!” your perception is likely causing you stress.
Twitter is about caring.
When we’re stressed, we lose the ability to care about not only ourselves but also our neighbours. We were able to witness a phenomenal act of giving when @Armano reached out & asked for help for #Daniela. There are similar stories, no less important, that occur on Twitter on a daily basis.
Many will never know how something they tweeted has provided someone with much-needed encouragement or help. If you’ve been helped by someone, I strongly urge you to let them know. This creates a “reverberational effect.” A very measurable change in heart rhythms occurs when we activate positive emotions. Life gets better, not only for you, but also for those with whom you come into contact.
Twitter is a society
And as in any society, there are responsibilities. Customs, traditions, folkways and mores provide us with guidance & rules. We are free to conduct ourselves as we see fit, however, there can be repercussions to our behaviour. There are those who are pushed out of the nest by the community for abusing this fine flock. As in the avian world, this “shove” can be a necessary part of growth.
In addition to Twitip, & the Twitter community itself, there are plenty of sites and blogs offering advice to ensure that you find your wings and fly.
Twitterunity
The heart of it is the ability to make connections and to communicate. Stress can cause us to be isolated. Twitter is an excellent forum that will allow you to emerge from your shell, find your voice and develop confidence. How wonderful to be able to leave the nest and fly to new heights! Who knows what you’ll see!
We are all in this together
When we appreciate the community that we’re all a part of, we learn. People are opening their hearts on Twitter. This fosters understanding and also acceptance. I see an openness that crosses cultures, political beliefs, religion & more. We don’t all think the same way & that makes for great discussion and sharing and I believe it leads to fewer struggles. A multi-coloured flock is far more interesting, as well!
Balance
Stress transformation is about balance; not only of your nervous system, but also your life. Wouldn’t you agree that Twitter is also about balance?
Here is the formula I use, based on 3 months of tweeting experience:
- Welcome
- Inspire
- Communicate
- Share and gather information
- Humour connects
- Ask questions
- Promote
- Celebrate
- Credit where it’s due: Retweet
- Thank
On that note, my heartfelt thanks to Darren Rowse, Kathrin Hardie and the creative developers of Twitter!
Twitter, in my mind is like any other social networking site in which case, I mean that it basically is just an express ticket back to middle school. That middle school student emerges in all of us as soon as we log on. The popular kids have more "friends or followers" and those with less "friends or followers" are emotionally effected by that lack. Everyone is always talking about everyone else. Something goes down...you can be sure they are talking about it on twitter or facebook. We all have those really close "BFFs" [best friends forever!]those few people who respond to your tweets or post on your wall, just like your middle school best friend. In the end its back to the social basics. We find our confidence behind a keyboard and screen to be those brutally blunt middle school kids and it causes social networking to take on a very unique face.
ReplyDeleteEvery new networking site starts out all grown up, like facebook when it was only for college students, or twitter when it was only a crowd of young professionals but when it becomes a fad it quickly "grows down" and becomes just the same. Hopefully, Paulson has a point and Twitter can be all sunshine and rainbows and people helping people. In my opinion the world would be less stress without all the needless drama caused by our little middle school selves.
I'm not sure it automatically takes us back to middle school, because there's a better opportunity to pick the people you follow and comment on. With that opportunity, we can specialize and avoid the kind of drama that got in the way in middle school.
ReplyDelete-Isaac
I agree with courtney, it is like highschool.People want alot of friends to follow and chat with them, to feel popular.Why is it that we don't feel excepted if we don't have alot of friends, half of the people you talk to on the internet you will never meet anyways. In some cases if it is people with in your community there can be alot of great ideas exchanged.People should understand that twitter is just for fun, if youre going to get stressed out over a superfical thing maybe this isn't for you.
ReplyDeleteWow, Cortney--Well said! I agree that it does tend to turn into a popularity game and loses a lot of its credibility once it becomes a fad...but I also think Isaac has a point that if users can carefully pick who they follow then it can still be a very useful networking tool.
ReplyDeleteI think the author is a little too optimistic about the effects of Twitter, though. I didn't realize some people take social networking so seriously. Her "formula" includes a lot of social courtesies people use in real life, not just online. Maybe I can't get my head around it since I haven't used it, but I just don't think it deserves as much credit as she's giving it. However, it probably is a great stress reliever since it lets users mindlessly jump from other people's pages and quench our short attention spans.