The Psychology of Social Media for Social Good

Thought for Today: The Psychology of Social Media is strongly connected to what I called the Psychology of Unexpected Adventures in an earlier post on March 23rd. Unexpected adventures bring joy & sometimes help us shift direction in life. Some people call these events serendipity, the law of attraction or fate, but I think it is something different. The March 23rd post led me to discover a wonderful new product capable of helping multiple causes. I'd like to share their story as an example of the connection between social media & the Psychology of Unexpected Adventuress. How has social media led to an unexpected discovery or adventure for you? I'd love to hear your stories.

I saw a very funny, touching film yesterday at the Garden Cinemas , in Norwalk CT. We try to see all the movies played at this wonderful 4 screen art house, since they show films you may not find at the bigger establishments. I knew nothing about the movie, but trusted that it would be good if they brought it. I was not disappointed. I had not realized that Susan Sarandan was one of the stars along with Jason Segal, Ed Helms, & Judy Greer in the movie, Jeff Lives At Home. I don't want to ruin the movie for you, but in one sentence, getting out of your normal routine often leads to unexpected adventures. Jeff's mother, Susan Sarandan, is worried about him & her one birthday wish is for him to buy wood glue at Home Depot & fix a wooden slat on a louvered door on her closet. Jeff sees everything as signs of his destiny. He follows all the "signs" when he ventures out of the basement to go to Home Depot.

Jeff, (Jason Segal) who lives at home & is going nowhere in life, but he is not the only onewho is stuck. All the main characters in this movies are dissatisfied with their lives in one way or another. His mother (Susan Sarandan) is working hard at a job, but is lonely & dislikes both her sons. Ed Helms plays Jeff's brother who turns to extravagant purchases to try to fill the void he's feeling in his marriage. His wife, played by Judy Greer, is having an affair. She is looking for someone to pay attention to her, since she feels misunderstood by her husband. Each of the characters change their normal routine on the day reported in the movie & have unexpected adventures. In the movie, we only see one day in their lives, so we can only guess & hope that the adventures lead to changes in their lives.

You may be thinking, what does this have to do with the psychology of social media? I have loved the internet since I first started using it about 12 years ago. I have been able to "meet" people through the internet that I would never have met in real life without this technology. When I started using twitter last May, I did so since everyone in the world of publishing seemed to think it was important. Personally, I thought it was a silly platform where people tweeted about what they were eating for lunch. By the end of the summer, my view of twitter was totally different. I had used the platform to build several thousand followers including NPOs, authors, musicians, psychologists, philanthropists, & journalists interested in social activism. I discovered some (@BlindJudo, @Elimin8Prejudic, @VABC & @MusicFromABottle) of the NPOs included in my book through twitter. Many nonprofit organizations found me.

On March 23rd, on this blog, I asked readers to share their stories of unexpected adventures in their lives. I posted a tweet to my now 7500 followers on three twitter handles (@WakeUpDreamNow, @DreamNonProfits, & @PostTweetDreams). Three minutes later, here's what happened:

WakeUpDreamNow: Are you open to unexpected discoveries & dreams? Amazing things can happen on the path to your dreams. See how... Link 8:31am, Mar 23 from Facebook

Eraselet: @WakeUpDreamNow Ck out how we followed our dreams and used our past to gv bk http://t.co/tPlVRezg 8:34am, Mar 23

 (The only change I made was to update the links which were no longer active!)

With over 7000 followers, I had not read about Eraselet before this twitter encounter. When I read their story, I loved it & promised to write about it after last Thursday's event Wings of Change at which I was preparing to speak along with other authors, philanthropists, educators & NPOs dedicated to changing the world. 

Behind @Eraselet is Bryan Ricci, another person on a mission to help change the world. His story can give hope to anyone who is struggling at this time. At age 15, Brian lived on the streets of Nashville. He was sleeping under bridges. Brian hopped from couch to couch to survive. “I didn’t know what to do,” Ricci said. “And then one day … I had this crazy moment. I hitchhiked to California, got a job waiting tables & turned my life around.” Fast forward, 16 years & now Brian at 31 is married with children & working to help others avoid the path he took as a teenager.

His current unexpected adventure started when Brian's 10 year old daughter kept losing erasers. Brian's wife, Kimberly Ricci, says that, "knowing how kids wear all those bands & bracelets around their wrists, Bryan told her he’d make her an eraser she could wear like (a bracelet).’’ He invented a rubber wristband, called an Eraselet, that doubles as an eraser. The wristband can be used as a marketing tool to promote slogans such as “Erase Hunger.” For the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission, “End Homelessness.” So the once homeless father, has found a way to help others erase homelessness & endless other causes.

I believe that once we decide to make a change in our lives & start moving towards our dreams, we begin to make changes which lead us to unexpected discoveries & adventures. Whether we get out in the real world or the virtual world of social media, we begin to discover people, organizations & ideas that can help us move forward towards our dreams. It is not some magical process even though it may seem magical. When you are stuck & start doing things differently, it becomes like a chain reaction leading to new opportunities. I hope this post brings multiple new opportunities for Brian's wonderful invention & reaches as many charities as possible!

What discoveries & encounters have you had using social media? I'd love to hear your stories!

Remembering & Honoring My Brother, Larry Bogdanow

Larry Bogdanow, 1949 - 2011

Thought for the day: Life is short. Wake Up And Dream now!

February 24th would have been my brother, Larry Bogdanow's 65th birthday. I still have trouble believing that he is gone. He was so healthy. He practiced Tai Chi, rode his bike from Soho to Chelsea Piers & swam 45 minutes to an hour almost every day of his life. He ate organic food, some of which he raised in his garden in Upstate New York. We all thought he had beat the odds after having a "benign" brain tumor removed 16 years ago. All his follow ups were clean. He had 16 healthy happy years living his dreams.  He watched his beautiful daughter grow into an amazing young woman. accompanied his Oscar winning documentary film maker wife to the Oscar ceremonies, film festivals & on vacations to exotic places, worked for good causes & designed amazing buildings & restaurants.

When he began to have some memory problems last spring his new physician thought it was just stress. His life long friend, Dr. Martin Blaser, (Professor; Frederick H. King Professor of Internal Medicine; Chair & F.H.KIng Professor-Int Med Departments of Medicine (Admin Support) and Microbiology (Microbiology ) was more concerned & urged Larry to get an MRI. Hours after the scan, Dr. Blaser was frantically searching for Larry to have him come back to the hospital. Larry now had stage 4 brain cancer, the same kind that took Ted Kennedy from our world. The prognosis was not good, but we all thought that Larry would somehow fight this battle & be with us for a while longer.  Surgery was followed by intensive chemo & radiation. After surgery, Larry seemed to be better. With the doctor's consent he went to his beloved country home & on Saturday morning even worked in his garden. Later that afternoon, he had a seizure. He was med-evacuated back to NYC. His condition never returned to the post operative state. Within weeks he slipped into a coma & never recovered.

So February 24th will be a tough day for me & writing about him is one of the few things I can do to  mourn & commemorate the life of my brother. Over the summer, I was in NYC almost daily visiting with him, playing music for him, singing to him, sharing my progress on my book. I was fortunate enough to attend & bring Larry books to the hospital from the Book Expo. I shared my excitement when I met Jane Fonda &"heard" Roger Ebert "speak" about his new book with the help of his wife & a computer.  He was hopeful that he would get better & go home. After he passed away, I became even more determined to finish my book. I vowed to find a nonprofit organization to help fight brain cancer to be included in my group of Dream Nonprofits supported by the book.

Voices Against Brain Cancer became the cause in the book that most represented my dream to help other families avoid the experience we went through with my brother. They give a voice to families & survivors. They support research to find a cure to this awful disease which took three other people I knew well. Dr. Irwin Freedberg, former head of Dermatology at NYU, is someone I describe in the book as a "Dream Parenting" role model. He & his wife, Irene Freedberg, was the Associate Director of Social Work at Bellevue Hospital. She was also the former director of Project Liberty, program that provides free crisis counseling services to persons, families and groups most affected by the September 11 World Trade Center disaster. & one of the people who designed the Mental Health program following 9/11. Both Dr. Freedberg & Irene Freedberg were taken too soon by brain cancer.

A close childhood friend of mine & Larry's, Amelia Samet Kornfeld, also passed away last February from brain cancer.  Her dreams are also represented in the book with Camp Young Judaea TX as the beneficiary. It is a camp that Larry, Amelia & I attended for years. Together we sang & believed the words, "You & I Will Change the World." It is where I learned to believe in the power of dreams to change the world.





When I spoke with a new acquaintance about the book, Larry & connections to causes he would have supported kept coming up. There is Green Demolitions. Larry was a green architect long before anyone was using recycled materials. He has had a solar generator & solar powered electric fence around his garden in Chatham.

Then there is the Lucero Center which is training Spanish speaking psychologists. Larry studied Spanish with a group of friends who volunteered to travel to Guatemala & build a community center which Larry designed over twenty years ago.



He would have loved the idea of Music From a Bottle which collects bottles at restaurants & rock concerts to support music programs in under-privledged schools. Larry helped teach me to play the guitar. Everyone who knew Larry had CD's of music that he would put together. He sent them to friends when they were going through tough times & gave them as gifts for no reason. He simply loved to introduce friends to new musicians & arrangements.

Even the Blind Judo Foundation & Elimination of Prejudice remind me of Larry. When he & my older brother, Bill, were young boys, neither of them were into athletics.  When my mother found out that they were being bullied & did not know how to defend themselves, she enrolled them in Judo classes.  I can still count to ten in Japanese because of those lessons.


 




Finally, Larry & NYC were strongly intertwined. NY Says Thank You is another charity that he would staunchly support as a way to rebuild after tragedies. Larry was an accomplished architect his work can still be viewed on his business website http://www.bogdanow.com/. He was however unpretentious. Although he designed Wild Blue, which was at the top of the World Trade Center, he never mentioned it. I went there once when the music was too loud at a Latin Dance at Windows on the World. Weeks later I mentioned having been there & thinking it looked like one of his designs, he told us it was. On 9/11 one of his associates finished an early morning meeting at Windows On the World, where Larry's firm was doing some work. When the elevator stopped running & the authorities were telling people to stay put, Larry's employee called to say he would be late for the next appointment. Larry, who had spoken with his wife who saw the plane hit the building, told him to get out of the building. He saved his employee's life. Larry's life was dedicated to building comfortable spaces for people to get together & trying to promote a peaceful world.

As you can see, completing the book & promoting these causes has been intertwined with my wish to keep my brother's dreams alive as well as my own. It has been a labor of love. I miss him & know he would be proud of how this book can help so many causes that he believed in as well. (To read more about any of the charities mentioned in this post, click on their name & read the entire preview.) Half of the profits from each of these books goes to nonprofit of your choice.

If you knew Larry & would like to share a story, please do. If his life & story resonates with you please share as well.