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The Support4Change Newsletter |
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April 24, 2008 |
Arlene Harder, Editor |
Volume 2, Number 2 |
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 Promoting Ideas and People Online
There was more I wanted to put into this issue than you would be interested in reading, so I'm dividing this into two newsletters. The next will come in about two weeks.
This first one deals with my experience of the Internet as a place for promoting ideas and for people ro meet people.
Creating a BUZZ
Last Wednesday, I attended a workshop on BUZZ (word of mouth) advertisting for authors. With more than 290,000! new books published each year, having potential buyers learn about one particular book (like Ask Yourself Questions and Change Your Life) is a major challenge, to say the least. Yet from FaceBook to blogs and YouTube to newsletters, there are a zillion ways to promote a product, service or personality online. For example, Tina Tequila is "the most popular girl on MySpace," proving it doesn't take any brains to promote yourself on an online community. You just need a good plastic surgeon and a willingness to exhibit the results.
The speaker, Robin Bartlett, an excellent amateur photographer, has spend his entire career publishing, marketing and selling print and electronic products and illustrated how people are increasingly using viral advertising to get their message across. If you'd like to learn more about promotion and publishing, his website has excellent information.
Online Charity
On Thursday, I joined 10 Million Clicks For Peace, an organization I didn't even know existed until I received an e-mail from my publisher, Bradley Winch. This is exactly the kind of person-to-person advertising the Internet does well. Below, in Online Friends for Charity, I briefly share with you for this idea for promoting peace in the hope that perhaps you may want to join and tell your friends about it.
True, not all online charities are on the up-and-up, as you know if you've read An E-mail Challenge on the Support4Change the blog.
What Are You Reading?
On Friday, I joined Goodreads because a friend asked me to join. This new site promotes friendship by sharing reviews of books that friends read. She joined earlier in April and now has four friends there (including me), and lists 152 books she has read, some of which she's rated. Sounds like an interesting idea.
If you joined me, we'd have lots of friends. There is also a place on the site where 2423 authors share what they are reading, as well as forums for discussion on a wide variety of topics — one person telling another, who tells another, who tells another about a book. Viral marketing.
Today I received an invitation from "JanetB," a total stranger, asking me to be her friend on Twitter. If you don't already know what that is, you're not far enough up the technological ladder to care. I'll pass.
Readers Add Their Two Cents Worth
In addition to requests to join an online community, every week I receive many inspirational, spirit-stretching pictures and features people think I'd like. Also, sometimes I stumble upon a site and put it into a "someday" file of things I want to pass on to my readers.
Now I've decided the time has come to share some of those and have created a new feature called Thought for the Day. Another new feature is called Ideas and Imagination from the Internet, so for each newsletter you'll have lots to learn — and to pass on to others in the Internet tradition.
How much have you promoted a cause, book, product, service, or idea through e-mails and social networking? If what you do promotes a better world and complements what I try to do on Support4Change (and Childhood Affirmations), I would like to know about it and will try to pass the idea along, which, after all, is the purpose of using this new technology to share and shape ideas.
Arlene Harder, Founder and Editor of Support4Change |
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This time should
be NOW in your time zone. Is it?
See below |
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FEATURES
 Visual Viewpoints: The Big Five
Ideas and Imagination from the Internet: Creative Mind Maps
Information Everywhere: What You Can Discover From Reading a Poem for Children
Thought for the Day: Now is the Time
Online Friends for Charity: 10 Million Clicks for Peace
Publisher's Special: Extended Until April 30
Questions Worth Considering: Using the Internet to Conduct Interviews
Readers Contribute Their Thoughts: From Age to Brain Trauma
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Visual Viewpoints
THE BIG FIVE
I hadn't yet decided what the Visual Viewpoint pictures would be for this edition of the newsletter when I grabbed a book, Life Safari, this past Tuesday and headed out the door. I wanted something to read while I was at the physical therapist's office having my back treated with heat, ultrasound and light.
I didn't have time to read the book several months ago when the author. John P. Strelecky, sent it to me, so I had put it aside, where it managed to hide itself under a pile of papers. For some reason I picked up the papers today and there it was.
Thus I've begun reading about the "Big Five for Life." However, the author wasn't talking about the lion, leopard, rhino, elephant and buffalo that are usually meant by the "Big Five."
His big five are the five things you should do, see, or experience in your lifetime before you die in order to consider your life a success as you have defined success. The book is very easy to read, as was Strelecky's previous book, The Why Café , an international bestseller. This one seems to be an outgrowth of the earlier work.
Pick up a copy of Life Safari at your local bookstore (it isn't yet on Amazon.com). If you're looking for success, discover your Big Five.
So that's why I've chosen pictures of the Big Five we saw on our recent safari. There are only four pictures because it was too difficult to get a picture of the leopard we saw, because the lighting didn't allow me to get a shot worth viewing.
Read the Visual Viewpoints feature and submit your own photos of animals in the wild.
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Ideas and Imagination From the Internet:
Creative Mind Maps
 Recently Paul Foreman, an illustrator, told me about his website, InspirationMoonfruit, which is designed "to help you discover or rediscover your true happiness" and as "a guide to finding lifelong inner peace." Among many inspirational quotes and short stories are many highly creative hand-drawn "mind maps" like the one here called "Happiness." (Click on the sketch to see a larger view and more details.)
What a wonderful Internet find! Paul gives free downloads of many blank forms you can use and many delightful mind maps he has created. I heartilly recommend you check him out at both InspirationMoonfruit and MindmapsMoonfruit. Don't know where the names come from, but they have just the right whimsy to inspire one's imagination.
I was particularly glad to run across his site because I was planning to use a similar idea for Better Tomorrows, a program for strained and broken relationships I am creating in partnership with Jane Toler, PhD. However, I this is more more creative and I think it will be more effective. What a neat thing to discover right when I'm immersed in the design of a program that can use it.
If you're interested in a computer-generated mind map, check out the website of Tony Buzan, an expert on the brain. He has designed a software program for education, business, and personal use: another example of what the Internet can bring. On the other hand, Paul's mind maps demonstrate that you don't have to have a computer to design effective and artistic mind maps.
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Information Everywhere:
What You Can Discover From Reading a Poem for Children
If you like poetry, both to read and write, the Moon Town Cafe features all types of poetry and writing — from love poems and poetry contests to haiku and tanka. When checking this out, because someone told me about it, I came across a section of poems written both by and for children. This led me to research a word I didn't know, which is one of the things that makes the Internet so great. Here is the poem, Sleeping is a Party that caused me to look up one of the words. Can you guess what it was?
Sleeping is a Party
Are you not sleepy tonight my little one?
Close your eyes and you can have some fun,
Imagine a story,
That lasts the hole [sic] night through,
With elephants and tigers,
Zebra’s and galahs,
Princesses and pirates and racing cars,
. . . Continued
If you guessed galah, you would be right. Turns out the poet used a name for a bird we saw in Australia, the Rose-breasted Cockatoo (or Galah Cockatoo). Wikipedia says that its distinctive pink and grey plumage and its bold and loud behavior make it a familiar sight in the bush. One of the joys of travel is the opportunity to have more information about things you read on the Internet — and vice versa.
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 Thought for the Day:
Now is the Time
This is a new feature of the Support4Change newsletter and the idea for it comes from a combination of two e-mails I received recently (another example of the sharing that comes through the Internet which I mentioned in the introduction). Neither is original, but every once-in-awhile it's good to remind ourselves that now is the time, as Paul Foreman notes in his thoughts on the topic of this now, this moment :
"The NOW is all there ever is and becoming content and enjoying the present moment is the key to accepting life, finding inner peace and remaining happy - being content and accepting 'what is' brings inner peace even in difficult times."
The other part of the idea of "now" comes from an e-mail I received from my niece that I put into the Inspiration and Creativity section for a page called The Daffodil Project. Here is an excerpt:
Why wait, when now is all you have? Why wait . . .
Until your car or home is paid off . . .
Until you get a new car or home . . .
Until your kids leave the house . . .
Until you go back to school . . .
Until you finish school . . .
Until you clean the house . . .
Until you organize the garage . . .
Until you clean off your desk . . .
Until you lose 10 lbs. . . .
Until you gain 10 lbs. . . .
Until you get married . . .
Until you get a divorce . . .
Until you have kids . . .
Until the kids go to school . . .
Until you retire . . .
Until summer . . .
Until spring . . .
Until winter . . .
Until fall . . .
Until you die . . .
There is no better time than right now to be happy because NOW is the time.
When is now?
If you have your
computer time set correctly, the time at the
top of the page will be NOW.
What have you been putting off that you need to do now?
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Online Friends for Charity
10 Million Clicks for Peace
 A new online community combines Internet viral friendships (see introduction) and fund raising to assist refugees around the world. Ten Million Clicks for Peace is a collaborative project with the nonprofit WeTheWorld supporting Mercy Corps, International Rescue Committee, Refugee International, and Women for Women International (with a connection to the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence). All of these organizations work toward overcoming the causes of poverty, injustice, oppression, and conditions that create displacement.
When you make a contribution, or tell others about the program so they can contribute, you can watch the effect you and your friends are making to the charities with an online "Personal Impact Meter," something that wouldn't have been possible ten years ago. Then, by giving a substantial one-time donation or by donating a total of $15 a month, or more, and/or by getting your friends to donate (giving you "points"), you are enrolled in the Peace Rewards™ program. This is a "life-building course" in which you will receive inspirational books, CD's, Posters of Peace and Pass Along Peace Cards received in the mail each month. Since I'm trying to reduce my carbon footprint, I chose not to receive printed material so that more funds could go directly to relief efforts.
Incidentally, if the amount of carbon you expend in your lifetime equals your carbon footprint, perhaps the amount of effort you put into creating peace equals your peace footprint. Joining this organization (and not receiving the material) is one of many opportunities for you to increase the latter and decrease the former.
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PUBLISHER'S SPECIAL
Extended Until April 30
Personhood Press, publisher of Ask Yourself Questions and Change Your Life has extended the special. If you purchase the book from them before April 30 (though the website says March 30), you will only pay $12.95 plus shipping. The store price will be $14.95 when it becomes available in May, and you'll receive it before it arrives in stores. |
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Questions Worth Considering:
Using the Internet to Conduct Interviews
 Beginning next month, I will be interviewing authors, coaches, therapists, and others by asking ten questions. It’s my hope that within two years I will have enough answers for an e-book. Until then, I will publish the responses to these questions on Support4Change, the blog, and the Q-and-A Club.
If you go to the blog entry called Questions Worth Considering, you will see that I've selected nine questions, beginning with, "What experience  taught you the most important lesson of your life?" Now I have to add one more question, which is where you, my readers, enter the picture. Go to the blog and read your choices for the tenth question. Then vote for the one you feel would most reveal something about a person being interviewed that you would like to know.
Is there someone you would like me to interview, or would you, yourself, like to answer the questions and have the answers printed on Support4Change? Please let me know or ask any questions about this new feature by using the Contact Us form
By the way, you'll notice that this is one more of those opportunities to use the Internet to discover something about someone else you would not have known otherwise.
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Readers Share Their Thoughts
Comments on Aging, Cancer, and Brain Trauma
 What Do You Like (and Not Like) About Your Age?
Gary Jones recently contributed answers to questions about how he views his age, 42. It's been thirty years since I saw 42, but his comments remind me of a birthday card whose greeting I share on the introduction to the Health section of Support4Change. On the outside of the card it says, "Greetings." On the outside it says:
"We're sorry to inform you that the warranty on your body parts expires on your birthday this year."
Now only has my warranty expired, but my body parts keep falling along the wayside. Since the only alternative to growing old is to never grow older, I'll take what I get as gracefully as I can.
Would you like to share your reaction to being the age you are? See What Do You Like (and Don't Like) About Your Age?
Do You Have a Good Cancer Joke?
If you think it's in bad taste to make fun of cancer, please read Does Cancer Have a Sense of Humor?
Then go to the first page of cancer joke archives to read the joke submitted by Dennis Moorhead. It's on the top of the sidebar under the heading, Recent Contributions from Readers With Cancer — and a Sense of Humor.
Hope for Cancer
Nichole Dolwern sent me an e-mail about The American Cancer Support Network. Out of the hundreds of websites offering information and hope about cancer, this is one of the best. If you or someone you love has cancer, be sure to look at Understanding Cancer.
Hope for Traumatic Brain Injuries
What do you think your chances would be if you had an open skull fracture, concussion, remained in a coma for three weeks, and were given tests that said you wouldn't succeed beyond high school? Fortunately, Craig Phillips, MRC, BA, to whom all this happened, could give you hope. Through his efforts, he was able to obtain both undergraduate and graduate degrees and today provides encouragement, motivation and empowerment to survivors and their families in his website and blog, My Journey thus Far.
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If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter, please go to the Contact Us page on Support4Change and send a note saying you'd like to be taken off the list.
© Copyright 2008, Arlene Harder, MA, MFT |
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