Meme – Simply Successful Secrets of Interacting Online
Carolyn from Thoughts & Philosophies tagged me for a very informative and useful meme that may interest you. It allows you to see what people do everyday to be successful at different things. This meme is called “Simply Successful Secrets“, originally started by Aaron Potts. The meme simply allows a blogger to list all the things they do everyday that allows them to be, or feel, successful at/in something. If you wish, you can read my article that describes what memes are.
Following are 6 of the many things I do and think everyday to make sure I appreciate talking to online people, which results in what I hope are successful interactions with people online. I would like to apologize to Carolyn if I misunderstood this meme in any manner, and if I actually write things or express them in ways that were not wanted by the original meme.
Among many other points, the following 6 points also allow me to figure out how successful I am at interacting with others online honestly and without being selfish:
6 Simply Successful Secrets of interacting with others online
- I respond to all people.
I respond to all people who contact me, even if that means responding to things from long time ago that I might have overlooked. I personally feel that if I cannot respond to all the people who write to me, I should not be giving the impression that anyone can contact me. I do not like being asked something and then not being heard; why would I do the same to others? Also, if I have any personal issues going on in life, I try not to bring it to other people or let me affect my behavior towards people online. Even when I come back from the hospital and am not feeling well, I simply say or write “I will get back to you on this within a day, if that is ok with you.” to people who have contacted me and need a response.
For me, forcing myself to write something simply because of being obligated to respond to things is the same as being selfish, since the other person deserves an honest answer from me. For me, telling others that I will respond in detail later or even not responding for a day or two and then responding with a good answer/reply along with the reason for the late response is an honest answer compared to writing a small thing in the email and sending it off. If you do not hear from me after more than a few days, that means I have misplaced or overlooked your email or message. My apologies; please contact me again.
- I do not like telling people they are wrong
I do not like saying “You are wrong.” I always show my opinion on things to show the logic I used to arrive at a disagreement, or I at least say I do not understand something in order to get more information. I prefer disagreeing over issues instead of with people. Even if there is an issue that people are really sensitive about, like same-sex marriages or euthanasia, I always give my logic and tell the other person that I can see why they arrive at their conclusion. Do I do this because I know I am a saint? No. I do such a thing because I want others to disagree with me the same way also.
- I try to reflect on everything almost constantly
I got this idea from Carolyn, and the more I think of it, the more I like the idea of reflecting at the end of the day instead of continuously. The reason thinking about verifying things all the time may be bad is that you feel stressed a lot whenever a doubt enters your mind. For me, the good thing is that because of reflecting constantly, I keep rethinking about everything to ensure my interactions with others have a good reason behind them constantly.
- I realize I am not here to only to help my readers
I am here to help myself and help my readers also. That is why when I come across a blogger who keeps mentioning that he/she help others by leaving comments on other sites, I try to observe if in reality they leave comments only to get people back to their own sites. I do that to figure out how not to act similarly. I am here to write what I think is right and benefit from your input and my expression, and I am here to express what I think is necessary for you to know. We already have deception and lies wanting money and attention from unsuspecting people in the guise of “I want your input on this” filling up the atmosphere in the offline world; why bring such a mentality to the online world also when we have such a wonderful opportunity to do good things online?
- I interact with the same people differently from time to time
Carolyn wrote that “There’s no reason for boredom.” At first I thought I might disagree, but after reading the examples like “A squirrel hiding nuts“, I realized that we really can kill boredom if we try hard, and I agree with Carolyn. Even if it is doing something we usually do not do, we can fight off boredom and feelings of wasting time. If my conversations with a person become boring, I try to spark something new or do things differently. If your conversation with a person becomes boring and you do not do anything, you might end up not talking to that person in the long run, and may actually not be interested in interacting anymore.
- I try to think about my readers the same way I think about people in the offline world
For me, saying “How was your day?” to a person online is the same as saying it to an offline person face to face. I say things when I mean them. That is why sometimes you will notice me online asking specific questions like “What are you doing right now?” or “How did this-or-that go?” instead of asking “How was your day?“, as in those situations, I may actually be more interested in other things going on with you instead of what happened earlier in the day.
If I ask something, it means I really want to know. If I do not have time to talk about something, I will say something like “Sorry, I have to go do this-and-that, but I will be back around this-and-this time and we will talk about this then” and later, I always bring up the topic myself to continue the conversation. I do not like asking something when I am not ready to listen to the response/answer. Asking something without wanting to listen to the answer means I have to fake my responses to pretend I care. I do not do that, as I do not like it when people do that to me.
Those are 6 of the many things I do everyday in order to try to be successful at interacting honestly and sincerely with people online, and I think it works.
What about etiquettes and manners?
You may have noticed that I did not mention etiquettes and manners that much. The reason for that is that you need a basic philosophy over things in order to have an idea of what to do, and things like manners and etiquettes are useless if you do not have a plan or a philosophy. For me, there are many points that make up my philosophy on interacting successfully with people, and the above points are some of those points.
Tag yourself, and thank Carolyn.
For this meme, I would like to tag anyone who wishes to be tagged, as usual. I will link to your site and your post if you list a few things that you do daily or almost everyday that allow you to be successful at something. I request that you please remember to link back to the original “Simply Successful Secrets” post, and the post by Carolyn as she introduced me to this, even if you do not link to my site or this very post. I will still link to you.
Thank you Carolyn for tagging me. 
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( March 16th, 2007 at 12:51 am )
Wow, Bes! Simply wow!
My favorite was #4 where you point out that humility works both ways. Sure, we’re here to help others, but we must first respect ourselves enough to understand that we need to direct that help home first.
Also, you make an excellent point with, “I do not like asking something when I am not ready to listen to the response/answer”. That, it would seem, is one of the ways successful people work: don’t do things for the doing; do them for the result.
The ripple-effect of this meme is going to be tremendous.
Off topic and publically private, I forget how we bumped into each other, but I’m sure glad we did.
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( March 16th, 2007 at 8:31 am )
Thanks for letting us into your ’secrets’ hehe.
! That last point was great too, sometimes or should I say, often times people just respond to you when they couldn’t or didn’t hear what you said and then you go: “What?” and then they go: “What?”.. lol, it shows that they haven’t heard your question or didn’t bother to.
I would agree that #4 is my favourite one as well! Not a lot of people think this way and its nice that you do
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( March 16th, 2007 at 3:32 pm )
Wow, thanks for sharing your secrets, Bes! Hehe.
Hmm, #5 hits home the most to me… Just because of some stuff I’m going through… *cough*, you know what I’m talking about, I hope… LOL. So yeah, maybe doing something a different way would help? Hmm… LOL.
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( March 16th, 2007 at 4:52 pm )
Carolyn, Thanks for the kind words.
I am happy that you tagged me for this.
I am happy that you found number 4 interesting. You put it in nicer and clearer words: “respect ourselves” is so important, most people do not think about it. If we cannot learn to respect ourselves or even at least try to, how can know how and when to respect others?
About your point of not doing “things for doing; do them for the result“, I think about that a lot, regarding why I do them. Do I do them because of the obligation, or do I do them because of the feeling of some level of satisfaction regardless of any obligation?
About the ripple-effect, heh, I hope so.
I am glad also that we bumped into each other! Thanks again Carolyn!
Vera, no problem. It sometimes feels strange to share personal things on the internet, because of them being personal.
You also like number 4, that is interesting.
I agree with the point about “What?” If that happens on a regular basis, people start wondering. Listening does not mean being quiet; it also means actually hearing and understanding and responding in ways other than talking back. I am guessing you experience this usually. 
Thanks Vera.
Chau, no problem.
I understand about #5.
I thinking interacting differently, even if that means not interacting, can sometimes help. If people keep hearing the same thing, they get a bit used to it and do not feel the need to change their response much. But if people are given the same thing in different forms to think about, that will arouse more interest and thinking compared to saying the same thing in the same ways repeatedly. Of course, it depends on a situation to see what to change and how to change, and whether or not a change is good at all.
Thanks Chau *cough cough*
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( March 17th, 2007 at 11:08 am )
Bes,
You’ve got a great list here, and one that I think a lot of people should take a look at.
As people try to grow the success of their offline as well as their online endeavors, sometimes the “human” factor gets lost in the mix. Your list has several ways of bringing things back into perspective.
Thanks a bunch for participating, and I will be posting the final list of both habits and participant websites when it is all said and done. That is going to be one VALUABLE list!
Thanks again!
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( March 17th, 2007 at 4:13 pm )
Aaron, thanks for the nice words! I really appreciate them. I hope the list helps people come back to perspective, thanks.
I look forward to the list. More people should see the information gathered from all the sites in this list/meme.
Thanks again Aaron for starting this.
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( March 23rd, 2007 at 4:11 pm )
Basically if you don’t don’t connect and converse with people what is the point of publishing.
You might as just save the files on your computer for your own use.
Sharing is where it is at.
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( March 24th, 2007 at 4:35 am )
Scott, thanks for sharing your comments and thank you also for visiting!
I really appreciate it.
That is an interesting perspective: if you publish something, you should want to connect and interact with others. Sharing can be extremely important.
Also, saving files on the computer for your own use can be like a personal diary, which people don’t see and thus they cannot comment. Online, you allow people to see while turning off comments; it is almost the same as a private and personal diary.
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