This blog is in response to all the people who asked me, “Why did you delete all your “friends”?

Those of you who read this blog regularly know I have a short attention span and I daydream incessantly.

You may also know that several years ago, I stopped watching television.  I was spending too much time engaged in the lives of celebrities and reality TV stars.

Given this – it should’ve been obvious then that I couldn’t handle having unlimited, ready access to the daily lives of thousands of people online.

People like me, who are easily entertained and distracted have to pay attention to how much time is spent on activities that deplete us. Social media is a distraction for me. It gets me caught up, sidetracked, lost and off-purpose. I find myself focusing on unimportant, trivial stuff that doesn’t enhance my life in any way. It keeps me disconnected from myself.

Yes, Facebook is entertaining but at what cost? I have things I want to get done and I’m not going to advance my life by spending countless hours watching other people live their lives. For these reasons I deleted all my “friends.”

Prior to deleting my Facebook “friends” I would visit a friend’s page and view their recent activities and then start navigating around to other “friends” or anyone whose profile pic looked interesting.  But it soon occurred to me that there were so many other, more constructive things I could be doing with my time.

Initially, I limited my time on FB to 15 minutes per day. However, it took me longer than that to simply reply to everyone who had written my wall. I wanted to be polite but it was becoming overwhelming.

I now have a Facebook FanPage. I update my status fairly often and I still reply to anyone who posts on my page. I can no longer view anyone’s page or write on their walls. I miss that interaction.

Currently, the only way for me to connect with people is through Private Message. However, in the time it takes to find their profile page I could have picked up the phone and called them. That’s what I do.

I realize I could have kept “friends” with whom I’m very close but even that would be too much for me. Perhaps I’m an ‘all or nothing kind of person.’ Sometimes, I do miss being entertained by all my Facebook “friends” and feel left out and disconnected.

However, if you want to improve your life, then you have to take responsibility for what you know. I knew that Facebook was too distracting for me. I did what I had to do to keep my life rich and stress-free. I want to continue to do meaningful work.

Our potential is limitless and we all have dreams. Our lives are enriched when we explore and discover more about who we are. It’s nice to learn something new about ourselves and then to take charge, take action and use our gifts. It’s easy to follow the crowd but not so easy to be yourself.

To be great in this life we have to let go of meaningless stuff and tap into our infinite source of unlimited potential.

I’ll admit, there are good points about Facebook.  I like it because it offers a great way for me to stay in touch with friends and family. But there are quite a few things I dislike.

Please allow me to digress and tell you a few things I don’t like about Facebook:

• All shared information is theirs to keep – we don’t have control over what happens to our info.
• “Share” and “like” buttons placed all over the internet.
• Targeted ads appear in my sidebars.
• There are ongoing, never-ending attempts to get me to import my contacts from other sources like, gmail, twitter, yahoo.
• My uploaded information is never deleted – even if I delete my account.
• Our personal information is sold to third parties.

So with this knowledge, I’ve decided to take control of what I’m viewing online.

Facebook limits the amount of friends you can have to 5000 and as hard as it was… I had to let 4,999 of my friends go. I miss you all.

Is there something in your life that’s draining you or your creativity? Please comment and tell me about it.

“If you don’t like how things are, change it!  You’re not a tree.” ~Jim Rohn

“The purpose of life is not to be happy – but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you have lived at all.” ~Leo Rosten