The I Factor™

Beverly Hills Times – A Wired World

Posted on December 7, 2012 in Media Buzz |

by Paul N. Weinberg

In the late 1990s, my dating experiences in Los Angeles inspired my desire to write a book on intimacy and connection in personal relationships. I never could have imagined then how the world would change, and with the advent of social media, how relevant the subject would become…

Fast forward to 2012. We live in a wired world – and a weird time. Not a day goes by that we don’t read an article about how social media and interrupt overload are having a detrimental effect on our personal relationships, rewiring our brains to look like those of cocaine addicts.

It’s an age of unprecedented 24/7 connection, in which Facebook, email, text messaging and other forms of electronic communication have us instantly connected to anyone and everyone around us. And yet many of us are also experiencing a profound and pervasive sense of isolation and disconnectedness. We skate along the surface of our relationships, having swapped quantity for quality and frequency for depth.

The explanation for this seeming contradiction of isolation and disconnectedness in a massively interconnected world is that most of us have never learned – or seem to have forgotten – how to connect or even what it means to connect on a fundamental level.

Connection in the age of social media is even more challenging when electronic communication – including not only emails and texts but also posts, comments, likes and impromptu online chats – seduce us into believing that we are connecting more deeply than we really are.

While these forms of communication certainly broaden our opportunities to connect and can help us feel more connected, they can also crowd out the more human, meaningful and multi-dimensional ways of interacting, and even create the illusion of intimacy when in fact we are still emotionally disconnected.

Social media is helping to create more connections between people – think of the people you know with several thousand friends on Facebook. But it’s also weakening those connections, degrading their quality, and in the process, degrading our ability to maintain them.

We’re more connected and yet less accessible… We’re more willing to broadcast the personal details of our lives and yet more guarded about revealing ourselves to those closest to us… We confuse our Facebook friends with our real friends and our social network with our social group…

What’s been missing from our lives is intimacy, which is really just the deeper level of connection that most of us talk about wanting in our personal relationships, but struggle to find in our modern-day lives. Surprisingly, this applies not only to our personal relationships – those between romantic partners, with friends, and with family members – but also to many of our professional relationships as well.

Intimacy is an age-old concept that is under assault and facing all sorts of modern challenges. It’s time to do something about it!

What Challenges Do You Face

Take a look at your own life and consider what challenges you face in your personal relationships.

Whether you’re a man or a woman, young or old, straight or gay, in a friendship, a family relationship, single, dating, partnered, married or divorced … If you’d like to understand how emotional connection is the long-term glue that binds together your personal relationships… If you’re more interested in the similarities between people – and their universal need for connection – rather than the differences… Then consider the following questions:

• Does something seem to be missing from your personal relationships and you can’t quite put your finger on it?
• Are you experiencing and having difficulty resolving conflict with your partner, a friend, or a family member?
• Do you feel stuck in old, recurring patterns of relating that no longer work for you?
• Do your relationships tend to skate along the surface and you want to go deeper?
• Would you like your personal relationships to change but don’t know where to start?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, check out www.theifactor.com for more information about The I Factor, the antidote to modern times and the detrimental effect social media and interrupt overload are having on our personal relationships. See how The I Factor can help you make real and immediate changes on the road to improving your relationships – and your life.

Paul N. Weinberg is the coauthor of The I Factor, an inspirational and aspirational book about connection in the age of social media. The I Factor was recently published to rave reviews and endorsements from some of today’s biggest celebrities, including Larry King, Jack Canfield, Marianne Williamson, and Sofia Vergara. Available exclusively online in print and ebook versions through Amazon.com and the Apple iTunes Bookstore. www.theifactor.com.