Airing your dirty laundry in public is a bad idea

This post is not aimed at anyone I know, so please dont be paranoid! But honestly airing our dirty laundry in public is a bad idea. Who does it really hurt (probably yourself) or who does it really help? Can we please make available a TMI (too much information) filter? Like an APP that shows a warning before we post anything! Alert, alert TMI! I am aware that people think TMI is meant to be cleansing, like getting it out of your system. Alert, alert....its getting it out of your system and onto the whole worlds system called the internet. Is that really the place to expose all our frustrations, regrets, sexual conquests, hate or jealousy?

Why do we plaster painful relationships all over social media? Who taught us this was a healthy thing to do other than the Jeremy Kyle show? It seems to me that venting online has turned into an internet version of road rage. The crazy thing is that at least road rage is private. Social media is the polar opposite, it's connected to the world and is forever in the system. Do we not realise that social media is our voice on the Internet? What does that voice say about you? Think about it, once a person reads your rage or sees your photograph of a rebound one night stand, what voice does that give you? Is that how you want to be known? Do you want this image following you around in social media hell?

According to a 2012 study in the US, 27% of college admissions officers routinely do Google searches on applicants and 26% check Facebook. 35% found posts and pictures that reflected poorly on those prospective students. I suspect employers probably do the same. How much control do you have over your "personal brand?" Not much if Facebook is a diary of regrets and rants! Do you want to be labelled like this? I doubt it. I would suggest that if we treated our posts as our personal brand we would guard what we look like online. If we really believed an employer, a college or even a court judge was going to use our online identity as a character assessment how different would our posts be?

I suppose at the heart of this issue is anger, which is a normal human emotion but can go so horribly wrong. Jesus was radical in this department. He said "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." The Message translation of the bible says in Ephesians 4:26 "Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry—but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life." This pretty much sums it up. Be angry, bad stuff has happened to you, people have abused you. But don't let it rule or ruin your life! And don't advertise your anger to the world to stay out there for all to see (people who don't know what your really like).

Would you rather be known as a lover or a hater, a person who forgives or one who holds onto anger so long it makes them bitter and twisted? The choice really is ours to make. We have free will, God made us that way. So what are you going to do, blame everyone else for your actions? Airing our dirty laundry is bad for the soul, its bad for our personal brand, its bad for our present and future identity which all can see for the next 100 years. Imagine your child aged sixteen, they Google YOU. What do you want them to see? Its that simple! Take charge of your present and future life now! Shape your own personal brand by downloading an in built personal TMI app.