Social media is a powerful tool.
It is also important nowadays to reach, build relationships and engage with
your audience. This also can be used effectively in the business to create
leads and finally sell your product and services. Everybody knows the power of
using social media. However, it also has an evil in it. Your personal security
and safety are at stake. You are at the risk of cyber bullying. Army of trolls
is waiting for you. You don’t know the fact. Even mainstream media is also
reporting one sided news. The other side of the news,
which is inconvenient to them, is never broadcasted and the same is applicable
for social media. People who look happy may not be happy in real life. In fact,
social media (WhatsApp university is ahead in this) is creating half -witted
citizens. Everybody is expert in everything and wants to comment on everything
without understanding the logic. Sometimes they don’t even know what they are
forwarding.
The whole world is shallow,
opinionated, polarised. You can see all types of emotions on social media.
Sometimes, people demonstrate their natural behaviour on social media, though
not real life. Reporters and journalists are not reporting facts but their
opinion. Everybody has their own biases based on their friable value
system.
The issue is not about the social
media itself; the issue is about knowing what fact is and what perception,
opinion is. In day to day, professional and personal life, we create opinions and perceptions and comment without understanding facts. We become judgemental about people, situations and everything
without giving much thought. We don’t discuss events but people. We tag people
in different categories based on our opinions.
We tend to be driven by our
emotions and opinions, which create a vicious cycle by fuelling each other. Our
emotions strengthen our opinions, which in turn, intensify our emotions. This
leads to impulsive acts and unhelpful longer-term consequences, which help to
maintain the overall problem. This behaviour creates unnecessary tension in the
society, relationship, personal & professional life.
Realising that many thoughts are
opinion rather than fact makes it less likely that we’ll be distressed by them,
and more able to make wise and calm decisions about the best action to take.
Hence whenever you read something
or encounter some situation, ask a simple question, Facts or Opinion?
Facts are evidence based which supports
truth. Facts are indisputable. They are driven by rational thought process.
However, Opinions and
perceptions are based on our belief and personal views. Opinions can be
argued easily. They are driven by emotions and personal feelings.
When you realise that these are
opinions and perceptions, we can dive deep to understand it more.
During the feedback session, when
the manager gives the feedback about some behaviour ask him the situation where he has observed that behaviour. If you are the manager, give the
example of a situation where an employee demonstrated such behaviour. That’s
the fact. Without giving any logic and context, it is just an opinion.
Take an example, your colleague
walked fast ignoring your presence. It upsets you.
You may think, “How rude he is, or he
is just selfish. He approaches only when he has some work.” Here, the fact is only he walked fast &
ignored you, rest all is opinion, your interpretation of the event. The
reason behind, he has ignored
you, may be different. Perhaps his mind may be pre-occupied.
Asking this question, “fact or
opinion”? has one benefit. You become mindful. You become free from
unnecessary worries and unhappiness.
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2 comments:
Right Sir.
Very True !
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