(guest post by Pam Vendetti)

The times have certainly changed and I have to say that in many ways, these times can be much harder on us. In our instant, always on, look-at-me world, self-censorship has gone by the wayside. Now, it’s rare for a day go by when we don’t feel the sting of someone lashing out at us. It’s not something that happens in person so much, and I’m not talking about actual differences or disagreements that need to be worked out. Rather, this form of lashing out is similar to an angry driver kind of thing as it isn’t a face-to-face encounter between two human beings. No, this kind of encounter is done behind an electronic veil of email, social media and chat rooms – and it happens all the time.

With this ‘veil’ on, it’s all too easy for someone to get upset and ‘speak their mind’ with angry, hurtful words in ways they’d never consider acceptable in person. With the computer buffer in place, whenever some people feel triggered by words that sit wrong with them, they lash out viciously or seek to punish the author for making them feel that way – and it usually wasn’t even aimed at them, ouch!

The thing is, this behavior hurts everyone. It does a huge disservice to the magic that is our computer and the ways of connecting it has enabled for us – ways that were not even possible ten years ago. It creates an atmosphere of isolation and forces others to take sides. We have to do something as a society to eradicate this kind of behavior. It’s time we all take responsibility for our actions, stop blaming others for the dissatisfaction in our lives and instead start working on being the change we want to see in the world.

Let’s turn the channel on our life remote!

Imagine life is like Satellite TV. There are over 1,000 channels available to us all the time. We don’t even need to get out of our cushy chair to change the channel to something more pleasing because we have a remote control right at our fingertips to do it for us. So why would we sit and watch something that was offensive or unpleasant and allow ourselves to become outraged?

Think about it for a minute. Would we call the Cable Company or the Satellite Company and yell and scream and demand that the station gets removed from the channel lineup? Would we think that they had betrayed us by putting on a channel we didn’t like? No, of course not! We would simply take our remote control and change the channel to something that does interest us. We don’t become obsessed and angry because the channel is there and we don’t want it to be. We just turn the channel.

So how about we start today? Let’s focus on our own life dreams and goals, find the tribe that supports us as we’d like to be supported and get on with the business of living our lives while letting others live theirs.