It is heartwarming to me when people want to connect with me on Linkedin.
It doesn’t matter if they are old friends or new people who liked something that I shared on Linkedin. The fact that someone took the time to connect with you says a lot about who they are as a person.
One of the nice things that happened to me is that people I used to work with want to stay in touch with me through LinkedIn. I have had many people say that they enjoyed working with me which is always a pleasure to hear. I don’t win everyone over and that is ok. I don’t need everyone to like me. I have noticed that people who don’t like me tend to be the same kind of person and that is ok too.
One of the things that I have learned with social media is not to take anything too close to heart. I have had conversations with strangers on LinkedIn in which they were not respectful to me even though I was respectful to them. My goal with originally talking to them was to provide a different point of view, but some people are very hostile to other points of view. I find this narrowness of mind sad.
Normally people who connect with me tend to be open-minded and emotionally healthy people. They tend to like facts and are logical or scientific in their reasoning. While I can appreciate faith/mysticism as a policy it tends to support abuse. I don’t believe in groupthink, and I always challenge whatever the conventional wisdom is. This has made me unpopular at work at times, but the company/product changed policies because of me and became kinder and more inclusive because of what I have done.
I can’t change the world but I can act in ways that are inclusive and open to those around me.