Recently, a friend told me, through another friend, that I retweet too much on Twitter!
As you can imagine I wondered where that statement came from. What had I retweeted that made him feel this way? As a result, I went through all my tweets and retweets that I’d posted recently.
Later, when I was having coffee with the first friend, I asked him about it. It turned out that it wasn’t that I retweeted too much, but rather that I tended to retweet people he is was already following. My retweets were filling up his timeline. Seeing as he only follows about 80 people this wasn’t so hard to do.
It was a pretty funny conversation. What it did though, was make me quite conscious of the people and tweets that I retweet. I considered what he was saying and I considered how I retweet.
We all retweet!
The whole episode got me thinking about how everybody “retweets”. Even people who aren’t on Twitter. In our minds, we all “retweet” conversations, thoughts and feelings, over and over again. If we’re not careful we end up changing our behavior, simply because of one situation, or one persons comment that we’ve continued to think, or even dwell on. What was a single moment in time becomes something we can’t let go of, and it get’s “retweeted” in our minds again, and again, and again.
It’s good, if it’s good!
This “retweeting” can be good, if the thoughts are positive and truthful. When we take on board a friends perspective through a comment they make, it can be helpful. It can assist us in our pursuit of the way.
But, when we allow ourselves to continual think on negative, destructive things, they only bring harm to our lives. “Retweeting” these things will completely change our outlook on life, how we see others, and how we see God. Worse than this, it will eventually change our thinking about how God sees us. Instead of believing the truth, we end up believing the lies we have “retweeted” to ourselves.
What should we retweet?
The Bible has many encouragements about the sorts of things we should fill our minds with. We’re constantly encouraged to meditate on scripture, to be “retweeting” it to ourselves.
One particular verse that seems relevant to this thought is Philippians 4:8 which says;
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
So, as you actually retweet people on Twitter today, allow your retweets to be a reminder of this scripture, and of the things that are beneficial for each of us to be mentally “retweeting”.
Thoughts? Who do you retweet on Twitter? I’d love for us to create a list of great people and organization to follow and retweet. In doing this, I hope it can remind us all of great things to be thinking about, meditating on and “retweeting” to ourselves.
Going to say – it’s twitter ppl! That is all!
Yeah, Twitter is Twitter… fair enough. I’m guess I’m not really making a comment about that…. my point is that just ‘like’ (excuse the Facebook reference) on Twitter, we all tend to dwell on things that can be bad for us. Instead of letting a comment, conversation or situation go, we ‘retweet’ them to ourselves. We end up holding on to things that we actually should let go. My hope is that in the ordinary, day to day things, like actually rewteeting someone, we can be reminded to dwell on the things that matter and let the rest go. Not sure about you, but I need reminders of God and His ways in my everyday activities in order to keep Him central to my life. Make sense?
So if you need reminding, then why do you retweet? Shouldn’t you simply follow those who remind you and leave it there rather than assuming others want the same advice – if that’s your reason for using twitter?
In regards to your other thought of likening retweeting to reminding ourselves, sorry didn’t get that reference in the original post, but again, as you’re reminding yourself, why the need to share with others who express no interest in needing reminders? The old adage of using a full bucket of water to fill someone’s glass comes to mind. Just fill a person’s glass if they want some water, if it’s full why poor them more water?
I follow on twitter that retweet people I don’t follow and I appreciate it because a) I’m reading a good tweet I would have otherwise missed or b) I like knowing what good tweets the people I follow find impacting, challening, inspiring or encouraging c) I don’t have to follow everyone – I might see a good tweet from them retweeted by someone I follow and find the rest of the tweets non applicable.
I think the whole twitter thing is a metaphor or maybe analogy.
There are comments, events that have happened or conversations that we keep thinking on sometimes, re-playing them in our mind.
I think the challenge is to make sure we’re re-playing the right thoughts, words, and adding new ones to replace the ones that are hampering us.
Thanks for adding your thoughts. You’re right, I was using the “retweet” as an analogy. The challenge is as you say, replaying the right thoughts and discarding the harmful ones!!
I am a bit useless and haven’t worked out how to retweet properly yet!! Am just enjoying all the positive input that comes my way..another reason why I only follow a few….so thank you for your positive input onto my life which ,in turn gets put into the “real world”… Lovely.
Love it!!!!!!! SO TRUE!
Thanks Nathalia – glad enjoyed it… and agree!!