Quite often when I have huge life changes or realizations, it is caused by something really tiny. Not always, but often.
For example: my religion. My religion has been through pretty weird stages. It gradually changed, but at times I would suddenly switch. At one point in grade 10ish I suddenly decided I wanted to be a more devout christian. The reason? I had this necklace with my mom's, my dad's and my birthstone on it, of a cross. I suddenly just felt like I should go to church. I didn't, but I watched a couple of live streamed church services online. After this brief 2-3 week phase, caused by a simple pendant, my religion slowly and gradually changed from being a christian, to being a christian spiritualist, then just a spiritualist, then agnostic, and now it is agnostic atheist.
It's just the really stupid and small things that seem to make these life changes. As you can see, they don't really stick.
I always make something bigger out of these small things.
Like the fact that I wanted to be a psychologist, in the past. I liked my psychologist at the time, and then once I was older, I read about psychology a bit, and then it almost became my entire identity that I wanted to be a psychologist.
It's something I do, I guess. I just make big things out of small things.
But I still feel as a whole, that many people can be inspired by really stupid small things to make life changes. Frequently, if a person thinks "I need inspiration" they'll go listen to some inspirational speaker. But the real inspiration people get are from random sources. You can't actively seek inspiration... well I suppose you can, but my point is that inspiration can come from anywhere, and that inspiration can be for anything. Like I hear my teachers talk every class forEVER about pointless stuff, but sometimes they just say one line, one little thing, that just gets me thinking.
The reason why I am talking about this, actually stemmed from a thought I had while on twitter. There are all of these accounts, and all of these people that tweet inspirational quotes, of their own or of others. On instagram I follow a lot of fitness gurus, who post inspirational quotes all of the time. There is all of this inspiration everywhere. I am not sure if all of the people posting these things are just trying to inspire others, or what. I don't really think it is all that inspiring or anything.
I almost feel like sometimes people just post things to get their opinions out there. Like with the gay rights tweets that have been going on the past few days. Everybody treats social networking like some central courtroom where they express their opinions, in hopes of inspiring others to believe the same way as them.
Maybe I'm being biased saying this, but I see a lot of religious posts, mostly for either christianity, or for atheism. I follow a couple of atheist accounts on instagram and pinterest, so that explains why I see that, but I frequently see atheistic comic/inspirational photos, or christianity comic/inspirational photos, actually most often on facebook, instagram and pinterest.
My psychological and philosophical and sociological brain is really thinking right now, "Why d people post these things so often?".
Do people really think they are swaying society with them? Are they trying to be insulting? Are they just trying to inspire or convince others of their belief?
I am super tired right now, and I am definately looking into this too much.
I think ultimately, the reason why people post "inspirational" photos and quotes so often, is more because people have this constant need to identify themselves as certain things.
We categorize ourselves into these smaller and smaller categories.
Like "No, I am not only a 23 year old male that works at Staples, but I have a red car, enjoy travelling and I love starbucks".
We are always trying to prove and identify ourselves to others, especially now with social media. We are also trying to classify others into these categories. Without social networking, it's a little harder, but with social networking we can find out so much more, because people are trying to prove their identities.
It may be a cliche, but you can tell a lot about a person based on their twitter, facebook, instagram pages. Sort of. If I were to look into this deeper, psychologically speaking, what people put on their social networking pages, isn't necessarily "who they are" it is "who they think they are" sometimes too. Quite often, without thinking, people will automatically stereotype themselves when they are proving their identity, so they will post things that are "like them" to post. Which makes sense.
I don't know, this blog post just went REALLY off track.
If you were to look at my social networking pages... you would probably in the first few moments of glancing at each page, that I am a teenage girl, in school, I like working out, I like running, I like comedy shows, and by looking at my pages (especially facebook) I don't have that many friends.
I touched on like 5 different topics here. But my overall points are:
1. You can be inspired by really small things
2. People are constantly trying to inspire each other and convince each other of their likes/beliefs
3. People try to share their identities and prove themselves through social media, somewhat subconsciously
4. You can tell a lot about what kind of people they think they are, by these social media pages
Have you ever been inspired by really small things?
For example: my religion. My religion has been through pretty weird stages. It gradually changed, but at times I would suddenly switch. At one point in grade 10ish I suddenly decided I wanted to be a more devout christian. The reason? I had this necklace with my mom's, my dad's and my birthstone on it, of a cross. I suddenly just felt like I should go to church. I didn't, but I watched a couple of live streamed church services online. After this brief 2-3 week phase, caused by a simple pendant, my religion slowly and gradually changed from being a christian, to being a christian spiritualist, then just a spiritualist, then agnostic, and now it is agnostic atheist.
It's just the really stupid and small things that seem to make these life changes. As you can see, they don't really stick.
I always make something bigger out of these small things.
Like the fact that I wanted to be a psychologist, in the past. I liked my psychologist at the time, and then once I was older, I read about psychology a bit, and then it almost became my entire identity that I wanted to be a psychologist.
It's something I do, I guess. I just make big things out of small things.
But I still feel as a whole, that many people can be inspired by really stupid small things to make life changes. Frequently, if a person thinks "I need inspiration" they'll go listen to some inspirational speaker. But the real inspiration people get are from random sources. You can't actively seek inspiration... well I suppose you can, but my point is that inspiration can come from anywhere, and that inspiration can be for anything. Like I hear my teachers talk every class forEVER about pointless stuff, but sometimes they just say one line, one little thing, that just gets me thinking.
The reason why I am talking about this, actually stemmed from a thought I had while on twitter. There are all of these accounts, and all of these people that tweet inspirational quotes, of their own or of others. On instagram I follow a lot of fitness gurus, who post inspirational quotes all of the time. There is all of this inspiration everywhere. I am not sure if all of the people posting these things are just trying to inspire others, or what. I don't really think it is all that inspiring or anything.
I almost feel like sometimes people just post things to get their opinions out there. Like with the gay rights tweets that have been going on the past few days. Everybody treats social networking like some central courtroom where they express their opinions, in hopes of inspiring others to believe the same way as them.
Maybe I'm being biased saying this, but I see a lot of religious posts, mostly for either christianity, or for atheism. I follow a couple of atheist accounts on instagram and pinterest, so that explains why I see that, but I frequently see atheistic comic/inspirational photos, or christianity comic/inspirational photos, actually most often on facebook, instagram and pinterest.
My psychological and philosophical and sociological brain is really thinking right now, "Why d people post these things so often?".
Do people really think they are swaying society with them? Are they trying to be insulting? Are they just trying to inspire or convince others of their belief?
I am super tired right now, and I am definately looking into this too much.
I think ultimately, the reason why people post "inspirational" photos and quotes so often, is more because people have this constant need to identify themselves as certain things.
We categorize ourselves into these smaller and smaller categories.
Like "No, I am not only a 23 year old male that works at Staples, but I have a red car, enjoy travelling and I love starbucks".
We are always trying to prove and identify ourselves to others, especially now with social media. We are also trying to classify others into these categories. Without social networking, it's a little harder, but with social networking we can find out so much more, because people are trying to prove their identities.
It may be a cliche, but you can tell a lot about a person based on their twitter, facebook, instagram pages. Sort of. If I were to look into this deeper, psychologically speaking, what people put on their social networking pages, isn't necessarily "who they are" it is "who they think they are" sometimes too. Quite often, without thinking, people will automatically stereotype themselves when they are proving their identity, so they will post things that are "like them" to post. Which makes sense.
I don't know, this blog post just went REALLY off track.
If you were to look at my social networking pages... you would probably in the first few moments of glancing at each page, that I am a teenage girl, in school, I like working out, I like running, I like comedy shows, and by looking at my pages (especially facebook) I don't have that many friends.
I touched on like 5 different topics here. But my overall points are:
1. You can be inspired by really small things
2. People are constantly trying to inspire each other and convince each other of their likes/beliefs
3. People try to share their identities and prove themselves through social media, somewhat subconsciously
4. You can tell a lot about what kind of people they think they are, by these social media pages
Have you ever been inspired by really small things?
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