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Are you OK without your Facebook, twitterfeed, instagram…? A report from the front.
True story. Last weekend a group of teens gathered in a nicer than average home in the American suburbs to celebrate the fifteenth birthday of a pretty, popular teenage girl. We’ll call her Miranda. Miranda, her mom and her grandma had knocked themselves out for days making tasty food, decorating the pool, deck and house, and devising a hilarious line-up of games and activities. They even had some movie choices to watch before they settled in for the sleepover. Confident she had everything to keep the girls enjoying themselves for the duration, Miranda’s mom greeted each girl at the door with a promise of great fun and a gentle reminder…
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When Did “Good Workers” Get Labeled as “Haters?”
People are sometimes described as “glass half-empty (negative)” or “glass half-full (positive)” types. A recent study took those descriptors a step further by looking at how such dispositional attitudes affect productivity in the workplace. Believe it or not, those employees who stayed task-focused in order to get their jobs done were labeled “negative,” “grumps,” and “haters.” Haters?! When did “good workers” get labeled as “haters?” My husband Ron, a Fox News contributor, was on Fox News Radio a couple of weeks ago (listen here) discussing this topic because of a Parade Magazine article released online June 23, 2014 titled, “Could Negativity Benefit Your Career?” The two researchers, who were referenced in the article,…
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A Heart of Thanksgiving
I love this time of year. I especially love how time turns as we head towards Christmastime. I have especially enjoyed reading the “…thankful for…” tweets and Facebook posts from my friends. Wordless pictures on Instagram simply thanking God for everything filled my days with smiles. God made such creative people! I didn’t do any social media things this year. I decided after last year’s Thanksgiving, to skip it this year. What you need to understand is that I fell into the trap of trying to find the most creative way of communicating my thankfulness for the wrong reason. I saw that I played the part of feeling thankful…
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3 Disturbing Gratitude Trends
It seems like everyone is doing the 30 day Gratitude Challenge. I am all for gratitude, but I am noticing a few trends that make me just a little bit uneasy. Trend #1: “Me-Centric” posts. They may go something like this: Day 1: I am thankful for my… Day 2: I love my… Day 3: I am so grateful to have a … Is it just me, or is this over-focus on “me-centeredness” just another symptom of our self-indulgent society? What if a post went something like this? Day 4: I am thankful for apologizing to a homeless man after I ignored his question and watching God work in both our…
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Some Social Media How-To’s
Recently I attended a workshop by some experts on how to maximize social media. And I’m going to pass along some of the highlights, even though I’m still working to incorporate them (in other words, I’m not yet totally practicing what I preach.) We began by watching the Youtube video titled “Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh).” It gave us info like this: Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Ireland, and Norway. If we had any doubts that social media is here to stay, the video stats cleared up that little misconception. Here are a few more factoids, in case anybody…
