Focusing on the Likes – The Lesson from Facebook

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One of the things I heard often from inspirational websites are about focusing on the positives. Doing more of the things you actually like to do and then things will be great.

But how true is that? Even though in general I am a believer, there are days when my logical brain will just go all skeptical on me. Is there any proof?

I personally believe that generally, if you do this, you will see the difference. You will find that your life started changing towards the way you wanted it to be. That is as long as you actually take action and not just wishing things would change.

For me, surprisingly, Facebook is one of the places where I could see the change. I happen to have quite a lot of friends there. Not because I am popular, but just because as an Indonesian you kind of fell into the habit of adding all your classmates since your first grade. Since there are 50 pupils in a class, and you kind of get different classmates every year, in the end it just adds up. The problem was, as I realized now, some I didn’t really remember (thus I didn’t really care about what’s going on in their life). Some I barely talked to in school, and they never talk to me now. Even worse, some kept tagging me in posts I truly have zero interest on (those got the boots, eventually). But lately, I felt that Facebook’s algorithm had been quite smart. It puts someone’s post on your feed based on your interactions with them. If you ‘like’ or comment a lot on what they do, it will show up more on your wall.

Some of you who knows me well would also now that sometimes I can’t keep my mouth shut (or in this instance, my fingers from typing), and I would just say what I think. I don’t say it’s a bad thing, because I do believe you have to take a stand with what you believe in. But the question is: if you keep on interacting with some person, criticizing them or posting topics you are against of, instead of just ignore and move on, what will happen? Yep, Facebook will keep on posting more about them. Possibly even recommending links relating to that topic. Been there, done that.

So instead, lately I find it better to focus on giving the love to things you care about. If the people you like didn’t post enough stuff (because real people have real things to do, maybe đŸ˜‰ ) Perhaps even follow and like some pages on Facebook that you’d find interesting. Some silly ones that made you laugh, some design magazines, or some food blogs. Eventually I realized the posts from people I don’t interact starts disappearing from my page (but watch out, sometimes it also hides posts from people whom you actually cared about, just because you haven’t liked their post in a while).

This, I can really see the result, albeit by a ‘simple’ Facebook algorithm . Focusing on the things you love works in your favor. Enough reason for me to keep feeding my energy towards the things I love.

One little change, for a start, and it will grow towards bigger changes. One little thing you can do will enable you to do bigger things you didn’t think was possible for you.

PS: Just in case you’re wondering, I’m still not very good at this. Especially when the Berlin days started to get dark and dreary like now. And this is precisely why I wanted to write the post, as a self reminder :).

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