Don't Drink The Poison

Have you ever heard the saying, “You don’t know, what you don’t know.” I was reminded of that saying last night at a meeting with a community leader and businesswomen, and it took me back to my Dr. Nels version 1.0 days. And as I tell people, the average human brain doesn’t fully develop until you are 22 or 23, and I was 32 when mine fully developed. I’m a slow learner and a slow developer!

But it reminds me of social media and platforms such as Facebook. We now have founders of some of these companies like Facebook and Twitter coming forward and saying that they didn’t develop these platforms for how they are being used today. Some of that is a great thing, as these platforms can be so powerfully used for positive action and creative motion, but all too often most all social media has turned into hate media, gossip, and personal highlight reels. The trouble with that is as I learned from another wise leader, he said, “When a person opens facebook, they have a great chance of drinking poison, then they do Holy water.” And for so many, consumption of this form of media, truly is a poison, as it allows for very shallow superficial unfruitful relationships. In a world where we are more “connected” than ever, research proves 20% of people feel they have no one to talk to.

Many forms of social media stir up negative emotions, jealousy, envy, and even hate as often seen with political or religion-related posts. And to be honest, for me, these are the reasons I really am not on many social media anymore. Our business platforms make posts but for me personally, socially media didn’t always bring out the very best version of Dr. Nels. And we have been on a mission to bring about change to social media through our different platforms.

The mission today is to ask ourselves why are we doing something. If we are doing something, and we can’t answer with a solid positive resulting action of why, then why do it. So ask ourselves, “why do we drink the poison of some social media platforms by opening them up?” And how can we help bring about real change on those platforms when we open them up? Don’t just consume the poison, help make it into real life opportunity for others to learn, be motivated, provide real value, and be nurtured to grow as we are all designed to do.