The Day the Fog Lifted
Two weeks ago, the only social platform that I use had a massive change. Millions of bots disappeared.
Usually, someone like me, a woman of a certain age, mostly invisible and often labeled as a purple-wearing, frizzy-haired, men-hating feminist poisoning the next generation of women, gets fired at. There’s always something wrong with us. And frankly, most of us don’t really care anymore because it’s just the way it is right now. But on that certain day, suddenly everything changed. They were all my people. All ages, all genders. It was like the big storm had lifted and the fog was gone, and we all could see each other. Ever so gently, we said hello and couldn’t believe the hatred was gone, just like that overnight. It took three days for the bots to make their appearance again, and since then, the hatred has increased as well.
Where Attention Goes, Energy Flows
Why do I tell you this? Because it is such a great example of where your attention goes, the energy flows. You engage with the lunatics. The platform owners don’t mind your experience as long as they can manipulate the numbers, and that means money in their pocket. You put that energy into the hatred; you make them money and lose your sanity. Often only to be cured by a detox from social because it is so vile. That is why so many of us end up needing a social media detox. And when the bots are not there, suddenly it’s normal people doing normal and nice things. For three days I saw what that looks like.
One Unhappy Client Among a Hundred
We are so easily drawn into the negative, because those types of people suck up all the attention in the air. We get a hundred clients who love you and one who is not happy. And that person gets all the attention, and the other 99 don’t matter anymore because we are so consumed. It is the same pattern as the platform, and the 99 are the normal people doing normal and nice things. The same pattern shows up in an inbox, a comment section, and a review page.
What Dr. Amy Albright Found
This week on the podcast, I have Dr. Amy Albright. Her story is not so shabby either. She had her own reckoning. She was an atheist until a certain day an acupuncturist poked her with needles, and she saw God. And since then, she stopped believing that science has all the answers. And then she took science to explore the spiritual and found that our energy has to be clean and full of possibilities and that we just can’t go down a particularly dark road because it tends to get darker; it attracts like. I have this interview for the podcast, and then there is a mass die-off from the bots. And it made me really think.
Amy sets a condition on positivity. In our conversation, she says, “We want to be inside of positivity and possibility, but we also have to know our work.” She says there are no bliss bunnies. She also describes the rule she set for herself when she walked into a room in her first year or so of practice, and she says it is still there for her: “you have zero space for the negative self-talk.” Any amount of bringing herself down, she says, takes something away from the person in front of her. Her laboratory work points in the same direction. She tells me that a person can receive neuromodulation, and if there is not enough truth and safety in the room, the brain does not respond the same. We are not robots, she says, and “this is a time when investing in ourselves is more important than ever.”
The environment matters to her. She says, “We have to create an environment where hopefully we are self-regulated, we are co-regulating, and we are speaking that truth.” I think about the platform on the day the bots were gone. It was the same platform, and the room felt different. Amy also says, “The amount that we invest into ourselves is the amount that we’re going to get back from life.” Attention is part of what we invest. Where it goes, the energy flows.
My Daily Ministry
Dr. Amy works with the brain. She can explain all of it. I really can’t. I can just tell you what my daily ministry is. Not getting sucked into the vortex, staying in my own power. Not letting the swinging bat that took me out after the Palisades Fire took so much from me determine what my future looks like. Perhaps you, like me, are called to a reckoning of some sort. If it bothers you, recognize it; just don’t engage. Engage only in the actions that you want to build on. Happiness, success, connection, and love.
Who Would You Be?
Nothing would be easier for me than to tell you what I really think, but frankly most of it won’t be productive. As we are heading into the midterms in the United States and the world is holding its breath if their formerly favorite big brother is coming to their senses, you do you. But do you in the way that it makes you feel good. If anger fuels it, it’s the wrong emotion. We are, and I am, fully acknowledging my own part in this, easily pulled into the drama. And to get a non-dramatic, mutually beneficial outcome, we should engage mostly in that.
Amy puts the challenge directly: “If you don’t like your life right now, you are the creator of that reality. You have the ability to create a different reality, but it takes courage to look at that.”
The takeaway for today is: what would happen if all those negativity bots disappeared overnight? Who would you be?
I made my own cut of this conversation with Amy, the parts every Founder of the Future needs to know. We call it The Architect’s Cut: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/social-media-detox-and-the-atheist-who-met-god/id1608742539?i=1000798163535
Let’s grow, Beate
P.S. The Forge is where founders build the framework and infrastructure behind their business: YourBusinessMC.com