Just Say Glow

Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos and author of the recently published book “Delivering Happiness,” wrote a post extolling Twitter as a force for life enhancement.  He notes that, besides twitter’s transparency encouraging him to truly live his values, he finds keeping Twitter followers up to date offers constant opportunities to re-frame or find humor in situations he historically might have found, well, more frustrating!  As Tony puts it:

I’ve found that almost every “bad” situation is actually an opportunity that can be entertaining to my followers on Twitter, which also forces myself to see things in a different light.

For example, last year I was staying at a hotel in Mexico and somehow managed to lock myself out on the balcony of my hotel room. I was stuck there for 45 minutes before I was finally rescued. This would haven normally been a very frustrating experience, but because I had my cell phone with me, I was able to tweet about it and it actually ended up being a very enjoyable 45 minutes as I tweeted about the progress of my situation and read all of my followers’ responses to it.

These are some seriously funny tweets, guys, so check out the whole thing at   http://blogs.zappos.com/blogs/ceo-and-coo-blog/2009/01/25/how-twitter-can-make-you-a-better-and-happier-person.

Tony’s view is an alternate perspective from many folks’ opinions  that all these social media outlets impose an increasing burden on our already overwhelmed sense of communicating as an obligation.  At Just Say Glow, we are definitely still in learning and building mode with our own social media strategy and need all the bolstering we can get as we progress boldly forward in this evolving world.  We are reflecting on the positive lessons Tony suggests Twitter can add to our lives.

Tell us about your experience using Twitter and other social media:  do you think it encourages you to be a better person or enjoy life in any particular ways?  Do you feel burdened or pressured to “keep up” or live a life full of exciting anecdotes worthy of sharing?  Does participating in social media help you feel less isolated or more a part of a community?  What about feeling “left out” or somehow inferior, because you aren’t off on the adventures or at the events others are sharing about and extolling?