Facebook | Keith Souza.com

Use Your Facebook Status to Change your Life

Facebook is an interesting animal. I was an early adopter to FB (started 6/14/2007) and as an almost 5-year grizzled veteran of the social media behemoth, I have seen some interesting happenings over that time. However, the most interesting item has to be what your FB status says about you.

In researching this post, I went back and read all my posts over the past few months (I usually update once a day or so). Now, if I didn’t know anything about me, I would gather that I am the class clown, post funny stuff and try to make myself seem witty. That my friends is dead on. Now, I didn’t say I was funny or witty, but I try.

So, I took some other FB friends of mine and read their posts over the past couple of months (the new Timeline feature makes that real easy). It’s interesting what you see.

I have friends that attempt to be wittier than me (they try). I have friends that have a genuinely positive outlook on life. Everyday is glorious. Sunshine, rainbows, unicorns and puppies. Ya gotta love it. I have friends that seem to have lives worse than “Born Loser”. Nothing goes their way. Every bounce of the ball is off their foot. The glass is way past half-empty. Then I have friends that live if only for their kids. No post goes without a mention of their children. I’m not saying that’s bad, just follow me on this.

But, I would like for you to look past the above general stereotypes and read YOUR posts. Do you see a theme? FB is a simple way to get what’s going on with you out of your head and out there for the world to see (like this post.) I believe that what is going on in your life manifests itself to a FB post. So, how is that going to change you life?

Read your posts. If every 3rd one is about how terrible your job is, or how you are dreading work, maybe you need a new job. Are they easy to come by, no. But you have to decide that you are going to start looking. If every other post is “why do bad things happen to me?” Then you are giving a self-fulfilling prophesy. What is making these bad things happen? Your financial situation? Your job? Your partner? Use that to look inside yourself and find a positive way to change it.

Now, you happy people don’t get off the hook either. If you were one of the before mentioned unicorn people, nice work. However, make sure that if that is your attitude, you are sharing it with others that don’t have it. Is one of your friends one of the people from the last paragraph? Call them. Take them to lunch. Share that good juice that you got with them. They need it. If you do, it will fuel you even more.

Now, I hope that I don’t lose friends on FB because you think I’m pointing fingers, I’m not. I love all 703 of you like you are my own internet children. More importantly, I hope this reaches at least one of you 703 and helps you in the new year. Have a great day.

Ahhhh, the Facebook. A place to connect with friends of old and new. A place to see what is going on in your friends life. A place to upload drunk pictures from your phone.

I believe that the greatest aspect to FB is the ability to reconnect with long-lost friends. Over the past year, I have reconnected with the two people (outside of mom and dad) that I have known since I was 4 years old. While not all my relationships go back that far, I have shot over the 400 friend mark thanks in large part to my high school/college friends.

Of course, the first things that you ask each other, “What have you been up to?” Wow, take a second to think about that. If you had not seen someone for 20+ years, how do you summarize you life. Do you simply focus on your personal life? (Got married, have x kids, run marathons) Maybe professional life? (Worked for XYZ Corp, started my own business, etc.) Maybe you just take the highlights of both.

I think what I’m going to do is to write up my bio in short form to be able to let people know what I’m up to. Maybe take a page from Twitter and summarize it in 140 characters. Here’s my first attempt:

SIU grad, worked at bank, went into investments, married Jennifer, one son: Truce(has autism), started Souza Financial, try to write more

That’s 137 characters, enough to fit in a Twitter window. But I didn’t say anything about living in Hoopeston, getting engaged and married on the same day in Las Vegas, my Indians tattoo, anything about my parents or brothers.

I just found an old friend the other day on FB and his question was, “Do you still listen to Anthrax?” Understand that my license plate used to read ANTHRX 2. Boy, hit the pause button for 20 years and that’s what he remembered? It’s who I was, but I almost felt like a sell-out to say that I still like them, but don’t listen on the regular. It’s funny to look back 20 years and think of all that you have been through and to summarize that in 2 or 3 sentences. When I get the 140 character bio perfected, I will post it here.