The Socializers | follow your dreams

THE THEORY OF FRIENDSHIP:
Use music (Last.fm), film (YouTube), story(blogging), photography (Flickr), movement (MeetUp.com) and poetry (Twitter) to shape YOUR unique space of reverie (dream experience). See your social content as a dream, a symptom of a deeper truth you are working to discover, a fantasy summoning you to your destiny. See your messaging in social network status fields as creative journaling. See social interaction as moments and occasions in life when you are creating the law of your own being. Grow this independence!!

“When you are presented with the possibility of seeing your situation as a vocation, you will remember your heritage as a destiny.” ~Robert Romanyshyn

Engage in a journey whose steps include slowing down (so you can listen and hear), learn to linger in the moment (engage in threads) and adopt an attitude of hospitality (all are welcome!). This approach will turn you towards what has been left by the side of the road (the hidden mysteries BEYOND transparency!!) Learn to breathe!!!

ACTIONABLE STEPS (IN SIMPLE TERMS):
Imagine that today is the first day you step into your absolute perfect dream. Let’s say it starts with a song you hear on Last.fm (http://www.last.fm/). Go ahead! Go over to that site and search for some music you like. And then find some music that is similar that you may have NEVER heard!

Now imagine that as you are listening to that music, you see a few other people like that song as well! Become a member of Last.fm and friend some of those people. Chat them up! Find them on Facebook also. Become their friend there as well!!

Try this same journey out with video (http://www.youtube.com), photos (http://www.flickr.com) and an activity you have always wanted to do with other people (http://www.meetup.com).

How are you feeling? Has anything changed? You’ve just made a bunch of friends around specific shared interests, right? Cool!!

Now head over to Listorious (http://www.listorious.com) and plug in words like you would at Google. You are going to see a whole bunch of people who also share your interests and who are REALLY famous on the Internet for knowing so much about that topic!! Start up a Twitter account and follow those people. You’ll be able to learn so many new things about your interests this way!!

Now find those same people in Facebook. Like their Pages and, when the timing is right, invite them to be your friend! (Be sure to write a really short but unique note to accompany your invite!). How are you feeling now? Does your world seem larger with possibility? Awesome!!

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of “Women Who Run with The Wolves” captures something very wonderful about discovering relationship:

“Having friends who regard you as a living growing criatura (creature), being, just as much as the tree from the ground, or a ficus in the house, or a rose garden out in the side yard… having a lover and friends who look at you as a true living breathing entity, one that is human but made of very fine and moist and magical things as well… a lover and friends who support the ciatura in you… these are the people you are looking for. They will be the friends of your soul for life. Mindful choosing of friends and lovers, not to mention teachers, is critical to remaining conscious, remaining intuitive, remaining in charge of the fiery light that sees and knows.”

Your social graph is fertile soil for the creature in you, the living spirit that wants to deepen into relationship and community with others and YOURSELF!

You are sitting on a couch in your living room. There is a feeling in your body, an image in your mind, a story germinating in your heart. And there is desire associated with that feeling, that image, that story. And fear also.

You formulate a question on how to expand that feeling, how to get into that image, how to live that story. You open up your laptop and go to Quora (http://www.quora.com). You type in your question related to this image, this story. And you get answers from global experts.

You decide to find more experts in this area. You go to Listorious (http://www.listorious.com) and type in words you associate with this story that is growing now. You find leading thinkers in Twitter related to those words. You find lists of people who are living that story.

You create a Twitter account (http://www.twitter.com). You follow all of those leaders. You listen to what they say.

You go to Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) and find those leaders and become friends with a few of them.

You sign up for Research.ly (http://www.research.ly) and begin interacting with a unique community built around your story.

An event where many of these new friends and leaders will be shows up via Twitter. You go sign up for the event at EventBrite (http://www.eventbrite.com/)

At the event, you see on Foursquare (http://www.foursquare.com) that two of your favorite influencers have checked in at a bar around the corner.

After several bottles of wine, you learn about a community of people these two are going to live with next year in 2012. It’s a community that fits your exact ethos, the story that has gone from being an image and a feeling to a reality. You book a ticket on your Kayak app (http://www.kayak.com).

While on the plane, you realize that you may need to fund your time away. You take the 11 hour flight to create a Kickstarter project (http://www.kickstarter.com) and when you land that night you upload it. Within 60 days you have received an ample sum towards producing a documentary film about the process you went through in discovering your dream via social networks.

At the premier of the film at an independent film festival, you meet the love of your life. Someone snaps a photo of the two of you and posts it to Instagram: (http://instagr.am/). A link to the film’s website is posted in a tweet with the photo. The story gets picked up and posted to the New York Times. The chairman of a transmedia entertainment company loves the story and the film is purchased as part of a global ad campaign for a major clothing brand to demonstrate the power of dreams. You are paid millions of dollars up front and receive healthy royalties for the life of the film.

Later, on a distant beach on a nameless island surrounded by loved ones, you smile and reflect on how effortless it all was.

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. ~Joseph Campbell

Resources: The World Wide Mind