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The Law of Attraction – a Teacher

Posted on November 7, 2018 by admin Posted in Law of Attraction, Social Networking Leave a comment

The Law of Attraction (LoA) is a teacher that is always trying to get our attention. If we cultivate awareness of our surroundings, it is a gentle teacher through the example of others. If we close our minds off, its lessons come as harsh reminders to stop and see what we are doing. It often does this through a sub-law called the “Law of Reflection”. Reflection does just what the name implies – flipping the incident back at us.

Ironic, isn’t it?

Looking for Daily Patterns

How can we better cultivate this awareness? One easy way is to look for patterns. Once you become aware, they are easy to spot. Have you ever said, “wow, everyone is doing (insert activity here) today”? Perhaps they not are doing it more than usual, but you are noticing a pattern of behavior emerging in REACTION to your own ACTIONS.

This is best shown by an example I noticed yesterday (Saturday) as I went about my day. I was working with Facebook on a very specific project – the topic of politics. I wanted to get them out of the way quickly so I could enjoy the rest of my weekend. Since it’s also is a delicate topic, I felt it best to deal with it early in the day and move on to other projects that require me to relax.

So I did my posts and later noticed one had been replied to. I was irritated by the reply and made a mental note to go back and reply later as I was just going into a think tank meeting. After the meeting let out, I was tasked with driving home, so I didn’t reply back. Wanting to gather some facts to back up my reply, I knew by now this reply may not even happen today as I had other more important things to do than defend my position to someone who was less than polite in their reply.

That Wasn’t the End of It

As I was getting ready for a late Halloween party that evening, I get a Facebook message from a friend. She suggested I delete another post I had made that morning because one of my friends was trolling her. Knowing her to be the saner of the two, I said I would look into it. I checked the thread and sure enough, my other friend was vehemently defending his position every time she replied. The replies on his side were getting meaner and less rational and she was replying with more irritation. After I asked him to stop replying and calmed things down, something hit me about the entire incident.

Acting not Reacting

The Law of Attraction was using the Law of Reflection to show me what would happen if I had replied on my earlier post. At that moment, I knew it was warning me not to reply in a discussion where we would end up only arguing. Yes, even trolling each other as my two friends had done on the other post! Instead, I chose not to reply, saving myself time, grief and frustration. Sure I have thought of all the replies I could have used to make my point, but I would not have changed his mind in the end? From his attitude, I would not have even gotten him to consider my point of view. Meditating on how I had replied in the first place made me realize I had set myself up to lose the argument in replying the way I did.

Better to Learn from the Mistakes of Others…

…than pay the price of making the mistake yourself. It saves our reputations among friends, networkers and family as well as saves us grief. In an era of people taking a stand for their beliefs more than ever, it is much wiser to learn to respect their opinions – and your self-respect.

If you are having trouble setting up your social networks accounts, need to update them or have questions, please feel free to reply here or send me your questions here. I work on all networks; Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and more.

Living in Balance – or how I learned to love my cat and power network at the same time

Posted on July 1, 2015 by admin Posted in Nerd Girl Tech Toys Leave a comment

If my Facebook friends have taught me anything, it is how much they hate Facebook, yet they still use it to talk about life off of Facebook. If this week of homophobic hatred, church burnings and Donald Trump giving the finger to illegal aliens and the all-mighty NBC has taught me anything more, it is how passionately we take to social media to talk about things that are not computer related.

The insane extremes of being a human being are at once maddening yet fascinating, infuriating yet entertaining. And it’s only just now as I ditch my desktop PC for my netbook, WiFi signal and the cooler weather in the bedroom, that I realized that.

My dad would have been proud of me balancing both with the skill of a trapeze artist today. He was an older man who had served at Forth Worth, TX, as a glider pilot instructor during World War II, and yet after the war, he acquired a passion for Japanese post-war advances in the world of photography by collecting 35mm cameras (you younger kids wouldn’t recognize those types of cameras – they actually had physical film in them – what’s film, you say? Never mind).

Even if the generations reading this had never lived through the Big W (another vague, historical reference), you can probably appreciate the irony of being a fan of emerging technology out of a former Communist enemy of the United States and it’s Allies. At least I hope you can. If you can’t, you seriously need to get your head to Google and search up, “World War II” and “japanese cameras of the 1960s and 70s”, then take your iPhone to a museum of history – yeah, that’s what I’m talking about!

Confused yet? Welcome to the world of Living in Balance with Technology and the Real World outside social networking.

I do it every day, live it, love it, experience it by taking a walk one minute and Tweeting about it the next. It isn’t that hard, really, for someone who wants to make it work in this insane world of love ’em, hate ’em, us vs. them when it comes to technology vs. life outside the wifi. And for business networkers in this day and age, it is an absolute MUST if you are to pimp yourself in social media and make a profit at the same time.

And while the world seems perfect this morning because I can take my netbook and wifi into a part of the house that isn’t roasting from an 80 degrees at 8:00 am start to my day, it wasn’t that that made me realize how lucky we are to have technology and humans in balance in this house.

It was my cat, Rhubarb.

He followed me into the bedroom and sat beside me as I leaned against the headboard of our bed, typing a mile a minute, fighting to get these thoughts down before they disappear. You see, he’s lonely. We lost his 11-year old mom, Harley, this past weekend, to cancer and now he’s my constant comfort, my constant companion. even moreso than he was before.

I went kind of insane with grief last week as I watched my beloved Maine Coon struggle to breathe as that tumor pressed against her windpipe. How they hell do I know when enough is enough, I begged my vet. I don’t want her to suffer, but human asthmatics suffer a little at a time everyday, yet no one rushes to put them down because of it. She can’t tell me what hurts…how the hell and I going to know when enough is enough when she can’t talk to me?!? I can’t wait until she’s gasping for breath, because by then she’ll have only a precious few minutes left – and it takes 40 minutes to get to the vet from where we live. I wanted her to have a peaceful, pain-free death.

How in God’s name do I do this?

The internet had answers we were too late to implement, answers the vet had either held back, wasn’t aware of or simply didn’t believe worked. The ‘net gave me hope at the same time it forced me to realize that we were just too late to use them.

Sometimes the ‘net is evil like that – just like life.

The two are not mutually exclusive – not anymore. Tech is here to stay, it’s only going to get more invasive from here on out, so we as human beings better learn to live with it and when you want that human touch, just reach down, pull your new, baby kitten into your lap and take a picture of her to share with your virtual world. Then, and only then, will you understand that balance is indeed possible.

Fake, Viral Stories: are they worth the traffic?

Posted on March 2, 2015 by admin Posted in Customer Service Train Wrecks Leave a comment

In the recent Digg article “Anatomy Of A Fake, Viral Story“, we see a perfect example of a hard-to-believe story going viral and driving massive traffic to websites around the world. Few stories that hit this legendary status are broken down in such a way that you can see exactly how it happened, which is what makes this story fascinating to myself and marketers everywhere.

Most people want their piece to go viral for one or both of two reasons – money and/or fame. Will fake viral stories accomplish this? Is such a story worth the traffic it generates? Let’s explore that.

Money – Is viral traffic interested enough in your fake story to contribute to your bottom line? The majority of viral story seekers are looking for quick entertainment. They are rarely interested in little else the hosting website has to offer them. Sure, they might sign up for updates, but a look at the statistics of whether they actually open and read the emails sent to them reveals the truth; often the emails are deleted and after the third or fourth email, they hit the “unsubscribe” button, or worse, flag it as spam and get your company in trouble with your internet service provider.

Fame – No one likes being lied to and a fake viral story’s job is to look credible to the reader long enough to get them to click. How would someone view your website if they found out that you were peddling fake sensationalism? Would they trust you in the future? Would they trust your products, your customer service or warranties on anything they purchased if you are a retail business? Would they trust your word on anything in the future? Doubtful. We all have experienced how hard it can be to convince someone to buy from us and not our competitors. Starting off with a lie to draw them in is the worst possible strategy imaginable, unless, of course, you are the National Enquirer or Onion.

In the final analysis, it is pretty cut and dried that fake viral stories are responsible for traffic that hits hard and fast, but rarely sticks around. They are off as soon as the next sensational piece hits their radar and won’t even remember you the next day. Hardly the type of loyal customer that anyone in business could benefit from.

Credits: Anatomy of a Fake Viral Story written by Craig Silverman. Read his research project report, “Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content” for the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

Civic Site Design deals only in reliable information from verified sources. If you have a need for such on your website or in your social networking circles, please feel free to contact us at info at civicsitedesign.com (replace the “at” with an @ sign).

WordPress Questions – How do I do an update?

Posted on October 29, 2013 by civicsitedesign Posted in Website Design Leave a comment

Have you ever seen this banner at the top of your WordPress dashboard? It means the folks at WordPress have a brand new, shiny update to the software they want you to install.

You? Yeah, their laying the responsibility of doing this on you. And they do it A LOT, if you’ve noticed. So, before you panic because you’ve never done this before, or don’t know how or don’t have time to, here’s a few options you can fall back on.

1. You can follow the instructions below for doing it yourself, or,

2. You can ignore it, or,

3. I’ll be happy to do it for you.

First, let’s look at Option #2 – ignoring it. This is the one everyone who doesn’t have time, forgets or procrastinates, falls back on. What happens when you ignore updates?

It used to be very little would happen. If you ran across a cool new plugin you wanted to use and it wasn’t compatible, no big deal. You felt you could live without it.

Unfortunately, WordPress blogging has become SO POPULAR in 2013 that many hackers are now targeting them as one of the easiest targets to hit and do major damage. Updates fix security issues and they know that many people are lazy or ignorant of the need for updates, so they can lay a very widespread path of virtual destruction by focusing on the popular blogging platform.

And you get to pay the consequences.

Option #1 – do it yourself, is really easy and quick. Just click on the “Please Update Now” link and it practically does the work for you. But if you don’t have time or patience for it doing it, or keep forgetting, there’s the third option…

We’ll do it for you.

For a one-time, once a year charge, we will keep track of these pesky updates and do them for you so you can pay and forget it, safe in the knowledge that it will get done and you will have less of a chance of getting clobbered by those stupid hackers. How’s that?

And it isn’t even expensive. You can pay for a year’s worth of worry free updating for less than your kid’s allowance. What do you say?

If you are interested, please contact us at kristine@civicsitedesign.com, put the words “WordPress updates” in the subject line, and your contact information in the email. We’ll save you those few extra hours a year and take care of the worry for you.