We Need To Celebrate

By Kim I. Plyler

Ten years a go, a client of mine who is very successful, has  a family, runs her own business and is the person who has an answer for every question, once shared with me her fear of celebration.  “Fear of celebration, I thought wow how can you fear that?”  After much discussion my client’s fear turned into a quest.  A quest for her to celebrate and enjoy it.  

Too many of us run on the need to be super humans, as if we are in a life challenge.  We are constantly competing to be better instead of just being. This type of behavior stems from a lot of different reasons.  But its time we move forward into taking care of ourselves, and taking the time to just be and to celebrate it.  As a recovering super humans, we can all take time to breathe and celebrate life’s milestones.

This is why for the next few weeks the team here at “Master Your Story” will be celebrating our one year anniversary.  Hard to believe but we launched our podcast 52 weeks ago.  We have had guests from all over the world and over the next few episodes and in our online information, we will highlight those people.  We would also like to celebrate you, the MYS Fan, for continuing to read, listen and share our guest’s wisdom.  It is in the creative power of the human story that we will heal the world.

Thank you for being a part of this growing project.  On behalf of the team and from the bottom of our hearts, thank you.

We are beginning to enter a time of change in regards to media and how we consume information. While many people think that we are stuck in the time of social media, I believe that we are actually entering a new realm of the social media world – one where transparency and popularity govern what is said and what is being pushed out to large audiences.

Mainstream social mediums, such as Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram will always appeal to a large group of people, but how will our discussions on social media sites change? We are seeing glimpses of this shift already with major blogging websites that make sharing ideas, articles, and information incredibly easy, taking away from traditional blogs or traditional media. Blogging sites like Medium or Steemit allow for the most popular articles to be pushed to the top of the page, or even to make money for individual bloggers – this is change.

The key to this social media shift, if you will, is finding how consumers and companies can use social media to their benefit. What social mediums will work for your particular business? Maybe Twitter, in Elon Musk’s case. Maybe Instagram, or Medium for more traditional blog posts or pictures, but also maybe Telegram, or Reddit for an incredibly transparent approach to the business. This is the path that must be studied because the times of every business going to Facebook are passing. People are starting to find the most efficient ways of talking to their communities, leaving behind aspects of social media that have been created in this era of Zuckerberg.

As the late Spanish philosopher, poet, and author put it best, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. The point of research is to understand the past, to learn from it, and to apply it to whatever it is you’re doing. Weather this is to either mimic past successes, or not to repeat failure, researching is key. Without doing it prior to the task you are working on, all your hard work could end up in failure.

Research does not have to be limited to learning from the past however. For a business, research is crucial to keeping your company competitive and at the top of your fields industry. There is a reason that companies around the globe invest heavily into research. That reason is so they can keep their advantage over rival companies by offering the best product that they possibly can.

However, the main reason why research is invaluable is that you do get to learn from the past. For instance, I was involved with a new project at my internship. We were tasked with finding out about what others have done with very similar projects to ours. I went online and did research about these past projects and I was able to come across a report that showed the economic impact of the project. This was a crucial find because it helped us to figure out what the next steps were in our project, and what the possible economic benefits could be in our area after the project is completed. If no research was done, we would have no way of knowing just how important, and how much of an impact the project would have in the community.

Lastly research is crucial to finding the validity of facts, statements, or just about anything you want to know. In today’s climate of “fake news”, it’s becoming even more crucial to make sure that everything is true. By doing research on a topic you can make sure that everything that is being reported on is 100% valid and it saves you from looking like a fool if somebody finds out that you are stating false information.

While research may be viewed to some as a time-consuming process that yields no results, they simply cannot be any further from the truth. If you take the time and deeply research information about your projects, both in business or school, you will be greatly rewarded. Not only will you be exposed to a wealth of new information that can only help you later in life, you will also set yourself up in the best possible position for success.