Ever hear that one or a variation on it? “I can’t do what you do because….”
Except that most of the time, the person saying it has absolutely no idea what you do, let alone how you do it.

There was a group of us talking the other day and the subject of Facebook and other social media sites came up. I made the comment that about 95% of the people on those sites use them like Xerox machines were used at companies before the internet. For those of you not quite old enough to remember, people used to Xerox jokes, cartoons, etc. and pass them around the office and give them to friends. Some people actually compiled notebooks full of these xeroxed pages like a scrapbook. That is essentially how many people use the internet, simply as a new way to pass around jokes, hugs, etc, to everyone they know. I love a good joke as much as the next guy but you all get those, “Send this to everyone you know” emails, right? And generally you get a lot of them from the same group of people.

My point was that the emerging social media of the internet was unfortunately, just being used exactly the same way by many people, when we have the opportunity to use it to be of service. The idea of social media is to create relationships, to get more social. And just like we’ve talked about in previous posts, by creating a relationship and finding out what people need or want in their lives, we can see how we can be of service to them. I said that social media gives us the opportunity to be better at what we do. It can allow us to be better at serving because we have the ability to create relationships with people that we would probably never cross paths with otherwise.

It was then that someone said, “I don’t have time to sit in front of a computer all day!” I said, “What makes you think I sit in front of a computer all day?” They answered, “Because I saw your page and you have about 600 Facebook friends. I don’t have time for that.”

I replied, “I don’t either. So I mange all those friends in about 10 minutes a day. In fact, if you count social media like Facebook and MySpace pages and other straight-up marketing sites I own, I actually have twelve websites, and another three websites where I can be contacted. And I can manage ALL those in 30-40 minutes a day.”

I find that when someone starts the conversation with, “I can’t”, “I don’t” or “I couldn’t” they many times don’t really know a whole lot about whatever it is they are objecting to. Not that everyone needs to be on the internet or have a Facebook page, but I think the knee-jerk reaction of “I can’t do that” can be very, very expensive. What’s the old adage? Your mind is like a parachute, it’s only useful to you when it’s open.

And again, it isn’t just the internet, it’s lot’s of things. I see it in network marketing:
• I can’t sell like you can.
• I can’t get up in front of people like you can.
• I heard no one really makes any money at that..
In healthcare:
• I don’t need to change my diet, my doctor said I can control it with medicine.
• I can’t change, besides it’s just a part of getting old.
• I don’t have money to get massage, besides it probably won’t help.
Personal growth:
• I don’t have time to read that, besides there’s nothing a book can teach me that I can’t learn for free from life.
• Self help? I don’t need self-help I’m not crazy!
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That’s why I believe we need to become patient, sometimes very patient (yes I know it can be hard), educators. We need to gently help people who are paying too much attention to what their sick, broke, ignorant friends are telling them. If folks would just realize what they are truly capable of, well just think of the world we would be living in.

But enough. It’s not like I can sit in front of a computer all day!