OVERSHARING, TMI, SETTING NEW BOUNDARIES FOR CHANGE

Oversharing the wrong thing for the right reason.

 

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times?

You might want to ask why you keep hearing the same thing.

Either you haven’t changed, or the people telling you the same thing haven’t change.

If the same person keeps telling you the same thing, pay attention.

One person with one message is someone worth listening to.

Either you need their help, or they need yours. Otherwise they’d tell someone else the same thing over and over because you stopped listening.

Is this you?

Have you changed things up, or stopped listening?

If you value advice from people you trust, let’s hope you’re up to the change part.

Now don’t get me wrong, change is hard. The bigger the change, the harder it is.

Still, giving the play by play on hard change is oversharing.

At least it used to be.

You’ve got a voice in your head warning you about tobacco. Cigarettes will kill you, says so right on the pack.

Cigars, cigarettes, tiparillos? What the heck is a tiparillo?

Quitting tobacco must be as hard as it sounds. It’s an industry with a warning:

If you don’t quit, you will die early.

Starting tobacco isn’t as hard. Just swallow a few puffs and try no to vomit. And look cool doing it.

Not so hard, right kid?

 

Oversharing 1

 

At the other end of the spectrum, it’s easy to imagine an old man in hospital room, sitting alone on a bed, eating lunch after tobacco cancer treatment.

The routine: order lunch, cover his bed in drop-cloths, deliver lunch, and leave.

The old man eats and coughs. Half his lunch sprays out of the stoma in his neck to the drop-cloths.

See this once and it sticks. It’s also oversharing.

Take a good look, kid.

 

Oversharing 2

 

A son visits his father near the end of his life.

Years of diabetic mini-strokes have taken their toll.

The old man sits near a window. His wife comes in every twenty minutes to light his cigarette.

“These new brands don’t stay lit like they used to,” she said.

He can still fish a cancer stick out of the pack and stick it in his mouth. Lighting it is the problem.

“This is all he does,” the wife says, leaving the room.

The son doesn’t smoke, but he lights one up with his dad, and the one after.

They sit smoking together the rest of the afternoon.

What did they talk about? They didn’t talk.

 

Oversharing 3

 

Facebook friends post images of food on plates, drinks in glasses.

They post pictures of cats, dogs, birds, and wild animals.

From them you see the cutest kids, most amazing vacations, and great outdoors.

Critics call them out. Critics of oversharing are not friends for long.

Disagree on an election and suffer the critic.

Make the wrong buy on something important and the critic explains how wrong for you.

Showing your life on facebook isn’t oversharing, it’s sharing. If more people had blogs, they’d share there.

Facebook is like a blog, just without the accountability. You can be a blogger, but can you be a facebooker?

Answering that might be oversharing, but give it a shot.