Subscribe to Motivational Mondays on your favorite podcast platform!
The world can be a beautiful place when we keep our eyes open, and this week鈥檚 guest wants to help us find that beauty more often.
Since Chris Anderson became the curator of the TED conference in 2002, he has developed it into a platform for disseminating ideas worth sharing. Now he wants to encourage others to help make the internet a place of positivity to replace the negativity that so often surrounds us.
Tune into the episode to learn how you can make your social media world a kinder place!
Anderson considers himself a tech optimist. When the internet took off in the late 1990s, he saw it as a tool to bring the world together. However, the outcome has been quite different. Rather than empowering people to better understand one another, social media often amplifies negativity and sows dissension.
Social media is often destructive, 鈥渇orcing us to pick sides almost, and to view other people not just with disagreement but with anger and fear and hate 鈥� and sometimes even disgust.鈥�
Despite the overwhelming negativity of social media and the internet, Anderson is still optimistic that it could, in principle, become a force for good. There鈥檚 a lot of good online 鈥� it鈥檚 just not amplified in the same ways.
That鈥檚 why Anderson wrote 鈥�.鈥� His book 鈥渋s an attempt to try to reclaim the internet as a force for good in the world.鈥�
We often hear people say we should all be more positive and generous, but why is that? How does being generous benefit you?
When we live in a social media world that鈥檚 biased toward telling us about things that are scary or ugly, then we tend to think the worst of each other. But there are truly wonderful, kind people out there, and their stories are being told somewhere. If we can amplify those stories, then we can learn to think more positively about connecting with others.
And it turns out generosity is pretty deeply tied to happiness! 鈥淧eople who give are happier. It's just absolutely clear from the evidence that they're happier.鈥�
Being generous doesn鈥檛 have to mean giving everything you have to others. Anderson suggests simply looking for ways to be kind: 鈥淚t doesn't mean you have to give away huge sums of money. It may not [have] anything to do with money. It may just be kind acts. You can be generous by being hospitable to people [and by] looking at people who feel unseen and giving them your attention.鈥�
Another way you can both practice generosity and surround yourself with positivity is to look for news and media sources that show 鈥渢he better side of life,鈥� like UpWorthy or Future Crunch, two of Anderson鈥檚 favorites.
鈥淭here are so many people [sharing positive stories]. They deserve to be amplified and followed. And [when] more of us who do that, it will actually shape the algorithms that X and the other social media [platforms] use. [...] Carefully curate who you are following鈥� to generously lift up the voices of those putting good into the world.
Check out the full episode to learn about how you can build a more positive life and how leads with generosity!
Many of our Motivational Mondays guests are committed to making life better for others. Check out how one guest helps create a kinder world through her work in teen mental health awareness.
Tune into the Members Only episode to learn about TED鈥檚 global mission of good news.
91桃色:
Read Anderson鈥檚 new book, 鈥�.鈥�
Find ideas you think are worth sharing at .
Keep up with Anderson on or .
Listen to other Motivational Mondays episodes.