Moving home can be a stressful time for anyone. There is so much involved when it comes to moving out of one place and into a new one, and it can be easy to forget just what has been completed and what hasn’t. But, it’s important that you try to stay organized as much as possible, or you could find yourself in a sticky situation when moving time comes along. As such, if you’re thinking about moving home, then the advice in this article was written with you in mind. We’re going to take a look at some of the things that you don’t want to forget to do! Keep reading if you want to find out more.

Find Somewhere You Love

You shouldn’t move just anywhere because this is a huge waste of time. If you are going to move, then it has to be somewhere that you love, and if you can’t find somewhere you love, there should at least be a reason behind this. Whether you need to move quickly for a job offer, or simply because you want to be closer to family, these are both acceptable reasons to find a house that you could potentially grow to love, rather than one that you love right now. It can take quite a bit of time to find a place that you love enough to want to call home, but we suggest you take this time if you can.

When you move, it might be hard to say goodbye to your old home, and the moving process might not seem worth it if you’re not moving somewhere that you adore. When you walk through the front door, you want to feel the excitement, and like this is the place you belong, not that you’ve had to move here even though you didn’t really want to. Look online, visit estate agents, and be sure to look around to find the best place for you if you’ve got the time to do this.

Consider All Your Finances

Another thing that you’re going to have to do is consider all of your finances. You can use a site like MortgageCalculator.org to work out what kind of mortgage you’re going to be able to afford before you start looking. This just means that you will have a better idea as to what price range you should be looking at if you’re not going to be buying outright. But, of course, there is more than just a mortgage to consider when you’re moving home. You’ve also got to think about whether you need to sell your old home first or whether you can move without this help.

Then, there are the costs of actually moving. So, you are going to need an attorney or conveyor, someone to value your current home for when you put it on the market, you’re going to need the help of services to actually get you out of one home and into the new, etc. There is so much to think about, and we want you to consider all of this before you start the process. You don’t want to get halfway through only to realize that it is costing you a lot more than you originally planned for.

Make Your Home Marketable

The home that you’ve got now is likely going to go on the market, which means you’ve got to make it an attractive prospect. This means that if you’re not going to be selling it as a fixer-upper, you’re going to need to make all the repairs. Or, you’re going to have to lower the asking price if you know there is something that needs to be fixed. This is also a good solution if you need to sell the home fast because a good deal is something that people are always looking for.

When you’re preparing your home for sale, remember that potential buyers are looking for somewhere that they can see themselves living. They don’t want to see your family pictures all over the walls or anything like this, they want a blank canvas that they can imagine their own items being in. Paint the walls white to give this effect and make sure that it’s more like a showhome than the place in which you live.

Consider The State Of The Market

Another thing that you should do is consider the state of the market right now. It might not be the best time to buy, and if this is the case and you can afford to wait, it will be in your best interest. There is nothing worse than selling your home at a lower price and then paying a higher one for the new property. So, it’s important that you consider what kind of state the market is in at the time. If you don’t understand how this works, then you need to speak to someone who does so that they can tell you whether now is a good time or not.

Speak To An Agent

Finally, we highly recommend that you speak to an estate agent because they have access to more properties than the ones listed. More often than not, there are at least one or two properties that haven’t been listed online or in the window just yet, but if they think it’s right for you, they will show you before anyone else gets a chance to see it. You also might be able to get a better deal on the home you want to move to if you use an estate agent as they know the market. We know that this costs money you might not really want to spend, but it’s the best way to ensure that you get what you’re looking for!

We hope that you have found this article helpful and now have a better idea about some of the things that you don’t want to forget to do if you’re going to be moving home. Good luck, and we hope that you end up exactly where you want to be without it being too much of a nightmare!

This is a collaborative post.

Melinda

A few weeks ago I participated in a collaborative post for Fibro Directory and I wanted to share the complete post. I’ve also included some additional posts from other great bloggers who posted their Fibromyalgia tips.

What is Fibromyalgia? It’s a difficult question and even more difficult to diagnose. If you feel you have Fibromyalgia and have been told no by a doctor after doctor you’re not alone. If you’ve told it’s all in your head you’re not alone! Push forward until you get answers, it’s sad to say how many years it takes some people to get a proper diagnosis.

Here are few posts from great bloggers who also share their Fibromyalgia Tips.

Mandy and Michele 

Photobaugh

Me, Myself and I 

Disabled Diva

Melinda

 

“It feels so good to feel like a real person again.” I was feeling emotional as we were leaving the park and heading to our local bookstore to continue our Saturday morning excursion. We had only been downtown for breakfast and to the park. Now we were headed to to the bookstore before we went […]

MAY 12TH IS Fibromyalgia Awareness Day — Reclaiming HOPE

Fibromyalgia isn’t about me, it’s not me and it’s not a pity party.

I am a whole person who has an illness or several but has many other aspects to my life that have to be met.

There’s a saying, you become what you think about. that works for the positive and the negative. If all you think about, read about, talk, and WRITE about is Fibromyalgia you become Fibromyalgia. You control your internal language.

I am grateful for the simplest of things, if the ice doesn’t spill over into the floor I’m grateful. If I cook dinner or even participate in cooking dinner, I’m grateful. I have to give myself some grace. There are many times when these things aren’t possible but if I’m not grateful for what I have then what do I have?

Our Mental Health is as important as our physical health if not more important. We can’t function fully in life with poor mental health. If I need to take a nap or sleep several days in a row, I don’t beat myself up over it. I don’t make Fibromyalgia personal, it’s an illness, not me. Again that’s where grace comes in. Work hard to take think about the positives vs the negatives.

Fibromyalgia is one of many invisible illnesses and it can be difficult for those who love us and those around us to understand. You owe no one an explanation for your illness, by that I mean, if a person doesn’t believe or continually ask but doesn’t understand, it’s not on you to change their mind or educate them. If someone cares enough about you they will look the information up and educate themselves in an effort to better communicate and support you.

Doctors can be our greatest allies or nightmare! That’s a fact we have to accept, it sucks but it’s reality. We aren’t going to change it and we can’t keep asking why. What we can do is stay the course. Take excellent notes, use a journal or a wellness guide, be specific with symptoms or the best you can. Sometimes there aren’t words for what we are feeling, give an analogy or something to help them understand what you are experiencing. Be optimistic, go into each appointment with high expectations but know that it may not find the answer. You stay the course and find another doctor, each one will get you closer to the answer. Don’t give up.

Melinda

I’ve updated my page Organizations Who Can Help to include the following Headache/Migraine Resources. Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels.com Theraspecs The Conversation MRF eMedicine Migraine Trust CDC WHO BMC Neurology Huffington Post Science Daily Migraine Trust Research Gate AMF Mayo Clinic Migraine Again Statista NCBI Headache Australia MCZ Migraine.com Very Well Health Excedrin Springer Migraine […]

Organizations Who Can Help Page Updated With Migraine Resources —

IDEAS.TED.COM

May 3, 2021 / Mary Halton

Angus Greig

The loss of a friendship can be devastating.

Whether it’s the slow drifting apart from a childhood friend, the sudden, sharp distance created by a disagreement, or one of the many relationships that have quietly fallen away during the pandemic, losing someone that you thought would always be in your life is profoundly jarring.

But friendship breakups will happen over the course of our lives, and we need to start learning how to deal with them in healthy ways, says friendship coach Danielle Bayard Jackson.

The most significant thing we need to do, says Jackson, is normalize the fact that sometimes friendships do end and that can actually be healthy.However, we haven’t been taught to carry this expectation into our friend relationships.

“We’re not looking at our friends through a lens of ‘Gosh, I hope this works out’, but we’ll do that with a romantic partner for sure,” says Jackson. “With a partner, we wonder if they’re going to be the one. But with friends, we assume they’re the one from the minute we establish that we like each other.”

And because we don’t view the loss of a friendship as a normal occurrence, it feels like a personal failing when it happens and something we should be ashamed of. Or, as Jackson puts it, “If friendship is supposed to be easy and yours ended, what did you do wrong?”

But that isn’t the case.

Friendships, like any relationship, sometimes aren’t meant to be — and even if they are, maintaining them takes real work. Kristen Newton has been interested in this work for years and founded HEARTConvos, which aims to help people who feel stuck in unsatisfying friendships have the kind of open and honest communication that keeps a friendship healthy.

“[Otherwise] I think we feel blindsided because we belittle the value and significance of our social connections and friendship. Yet we recognize the weight that they carry when they don’t work out, and we experience that hurt and disappointment,” she says. Here, she and Jackson share their advice.

How do you get over a friendship that has ended?

1. Give yourself space to grieve the loss

This is the most important place to start. Be honest with other people in your life about what you’re going through, and try using the same language and self-care that you would during a breakup with a partner.

“Definitely get the ice cream!” says Jackson. “I think some of us try to be tough, and it feels a little juvenile — maybe a little vulnerable — to say ‘My feelings are hurt and I am sad over a friendship’. Feel the feelings the same way you would grieve over a romantic breakup.”

Newton agrees. “To the brain, a breakup is a breakup,” she says. “Sometimes people are wrestling through stages of grief. Then you start asking yourself: ‘Was I unhealthily attached to this person in a romantic way?’ [Because] I’ve only ever associated this type of pain in a romantic connection or with an egregious hurt in my family.”

But friendships are just as important and the feelings tied up in them just as profound — more even, because we expect them to last much longer.When Jackson posted a TikTok about this emotional significance of friendship early in 2021, the comments took an unexpected turn. “I was surprised by how much pain there was surrounding lost friendships. That wasn’t even what the video was about, but that’s where the conversation went. So I think a lot of us are still hurt by those things and looking for a space to process how to move on.”

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6916601576593444102?lang=en-us

2. Get closure, if you can

With a romantic partner, there’s usually a breakup conversation and you know that you’re either in the relationship or you’re not, says Jackson. “But the very blurry nature of starting and ending friendships makes it hard to navigate to the end — because when is it the end?”

Newton recommends “diagnosing” what has gotten you to where you are — this means asking yourself a lot of questions. What exactly happened? How is it affecting me? No, how is it really affecting me?

Then, you can do your best to get clarity from your friend at this stage. “You can think about why everything is settling the way that it is. That is not in an effort to change the other person’s mind, but just so that you have a sense of closure as you’re going into that loss,” Newton says.

If a friendship has ended badly, this may mean accepting that you won’t get to have a final conversation with them, says Jackson. “Try your best to stop replaying and rehearsing what you should have said. But if a part of your healing process might be to say your piece, or to apologize if you are the one who did something wrong, then you need to apologize whether they write you back or not.”

3. Identify what you need to do to move on

“Once you have a proper diagnosis of the impact of the breakup on your life and on your mental and emotional state, then you can treat it properly,” says Newton.

This might mean talking through things with someone you trust, creating space for yourself to grieve some more, or removing things from your life that trigger memories you’re not quite ready to process yet.

Jackson recommends moving towards using the language of gratitude.“Once you can start to put the relationship in the language of the past tense and say, ‘You know what, I’m so thankful they were in my life during this season,’ you can have gratitude for it and not feel bitter.”

4. Assess the health and boundaries of your other friendships

One of the biggest worries that comes with a friendship breakup can be how it will impact your wider group of friends. Trust these other connections, says Newton, and don’t try to hide what’s happening. “If I cut off my hand, the rest of the body is going to notice that I don’t have a hand anymore. But when friend groups don’t have healthy boundaries as a part of their friend culture, if one person falls out with another person within the group, the whole group is going to fall away.”

Great, you’re thinking — even more loss! But if that’s what ends up happening, it means those friendships weren’t healthy to begin with, and they are not well set up to support you. A huge part of maintaining healthy boundaries, says Newton, is realizing that it’s OK to have different levels of connection with each other within a group. You can feel very close to some people; others only enter your life because they are friends with your friends.

Make it a habit to take the pulse of your most important friendships regularly. “Be in the habit of debriefing your relationships, keeping tabs on one another and saying ‘Hey, how are we doing?’,” says Newton.

It’s easy to assume our friends will always be there, but close relationships require maintenance. This involves having very real conversations, and regularly checking in with each other in a meaningful way that can flag problems before they become problems.

5. Remember that you still deserve friendship

It’s not always easy to meet new people, especially once you get past your 20s, but it’s important not to let the loss of one friend make you feel unworthy.

“I see it become a barrier sometimes to making new friends,” says Jackson, “because we find so much of our identity in our friends. So when a friendship is over, what does that mean for me and who I am?” Losing that sense of belonging and acceptance is hard and all the more reason to work on developing an unconditional sense of self-worth that is innate and can support you through difficult times.

Lastly, Newton says, it is important to understand that “the overwhelming sense of emotion that we feel amidst a breakup sometimes can feel paralyzing.” It can be very difficult to cope with. “Give yourself the freedom and permission to feel what you feel, remind yourself of what is true, and act on what you believe.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Halton is Assistant Ideas Editor at TED, and a science journalist based in the Pacific Northwest.

I can’t think of any other time in my life where thanking nurses is so important. Nurses have given so much, some even their lives to help save COVID patients. They have long been the unsung heroes but with COVID we’ve seen stories on the news every day about the toll COVID has taken on their mental health. That’s not something I would normally think about but when you consider over 500,000 people have died in the United States alone, that’s a lot of death to deal with. I can only imagine how thankful families are for the nurses who spent hours every day giving their all to keep their loved ones alive.

Personally, I’m preparing to have a knee replacement in June and was so relieved to find out I get to go back to the same hospital. I’ve received some of the best care in my life there. When you are totally dependent on another person for everything but blinking you really appreciate every little step they take.

When I had my right knee replaced several years ago it was quite a shake as to what you would go thru after surgery. I was in the hospital for three days and could not get out of bed by myself. There were times I wished my bladder weren’t so active when I would have to use the call button again. When you really understand the care you’re getting is when you get out of bed. You are strapped with support to the nurse who helps you walk to the bathroom. They patiently wait outside time after time, maybe that’s the best time of day in which they get to sit down. I don’t know but I wouldn’t find that a good part of my day. They were so prompt with my pain meds, right on the dot every four hours, not once did I have to ask for medicine.

I’m sure you have at least one encounter with a nurse and I hope it was a good one because I believe the majority love their job and do their best.

The next time you see a nurse show your appreciation. It will make their day and I’m sure they need the lift.

Melinda

Home hunting can be a stressful thing, right? It can take ages, and you might never find the house you really want, and you might have family on the way that makes it even harder to go from property to property, or maybe the house hunting is just getting in the way of the honeymoon period. No matter what the reason is, you’re dreading the thought of trying to find a new place to live. 

And that’s where we can help. We’ve got some ideas for stress-busting the process below, so be sure to keep them in mind if you’re about to hit the market and secure a property that could become yours forever home. 

Pexels Image – CC0 Licence

Have the Same Idea

Whoever you’re buying with, and whatever reasons you’re buying for, you all need to be on the same page. Most new home buyers are couples, either newlywed or with a young, growing family, and while both groups have a lot in common, you and your partner need to be in the agreement above all else. 

We don’t want any arguments here, or to delay the house-hunting process by any number of weeks, which will really help with keeping the stress off of your shoulders. So, you need to both be looking for the same thing – sit down together, and don’t stop workshopping until you have the same list on your minds. Only then should you get in touch with an estate agent. 

Work with an Agent

You’re also going to want to work with an agent, to allow them to do all of the hard work for you, such as scouting out properties and negotiating the price with the seller. Because when you’ve got someone knowledgeable and professional on your side, such as PropertiesMiami, you have a much better chance of scoring a smooth and budget buying process.

Plus, an estate agent will help you to decide what it is you’re looking for, or need if you’re struggling to come up with these features yourself. They can help you to come to an agreement, or even reach a compromise together. 

Have Compromises Ready

Finally, there’s a good chance you’re not going to score the home of your dreams here (but it’s not impossible!), and you’ll need to have some compromises ready in advance. What are you willing to negotiate with your partner on? What features aren’t quite a must-have, and you’re willing to live without and/or renovate in at a later date? 

You can swap out many things to bring your dream home to life, like the light fixtures, flooring, and even windows. Keep an open mind and imagine what it will look like with a change in mirrors, installing a bay window, or maybe adding a chandelier. The cost to get a window replacement company or electrician in to bring your idea to life might be cheaper than hunting down the home that already has the fixture installed. Is the kitchen boring you to sleep? Take off the cupboard doors and add your touch to them with a lick of paint and new knobs. If your taste is a bit more expensive than your current budget, don’t write off the house just yet. Instead, start saving for the changes you love. 

For example, maybe you want a breakfast nook, but none of the houses you like have one? Decide if this really matters or not, and then buy the house that could become a proper family home, and still has room for that breakfast nook when you’ve got the cash later on… 

Stress is at an all-time high when house hunting and moving, so try to eliminate it from the start. You’ve got some great tools on your side to do so!

This is a collaborative post.

Melinda

I asked Aila Health to provide an introduction about their service offerings for my autoimmune disease and other chronic illness readers. I found their concept interesting and wanted to share it with you. The idea of tapping into a community of like-minded people is interesting and finding a place that offers one on one coaching from people who understand chronic illnesses is rare. 

—–

Aila Health | Newsletter Content

Welcome to Aila Health!

Precision health for chronic illness

Who We Are

Article by Rory Stanton, CEO

Hi guys! Rory here. I’m the founder of Aila Health, a company I’m building to bring compassionate, accessible care to people living with autoimmune diseases and other chronic illnesses. I wanted to let you know why I created Aila Health and tell you about the app we just released for chronic illness warriors. After watching my cousin spend years visiting dozens of specialists to help diagnose and manage her chronic illness, I thought there had to be a better way.

The Problem

I talked with hundreds of patients and specialists to try to figure out how to solve this problem. I learned that your care is siloed and your doctors can’t always see a full picture of your health. They see a couple of your symptoms at random intervals but don’t always see all of the other symptoms or factors that cause flare ups.

Not Invisible

The Aila Health app allows you to sync all of your health data in one place and identify what is triggering your flare ups. Because your health information is centralized in one place, you can better share your trends with your doctors. Your doctors can then see “invisible” symptoms like chronic pain, fatigue, insomnia with the data, even if your lab tests keep coming back “normal.”

The Community

Once you download the app, you can also connect with other chronic illness warriors in the Aila community to share insights and get support. We’d love to invite members of the Looking for the Light community to the Aila Health app.

Download the app for free to consolidate your health information and track your flare ups in one place

Personalized Coaching

If you want additional help with personalized nutrition, mindfulness and stress management training and 1:1 holistic health coaching, you can subscribe to the health coaching program. We’re offering Looking for the Light members 25 % OFF your first month.

Just enter code Light25  at checkout.

As part of building community, we’re hosting a 3-month webinar series, kicking off Thursday, May 13th. First up in the series, we’ll hear real stories from real people about living with autoimmune disease. These powerful, amazing, and inspiring individuals will share about their health journeys. Register to attend here and we’ll keep you posted on additional webinars too! https://ailahealth.com/webinar

Aila Health solutions are available to the chronic illness community with a tap of the finger. It’s one place for your one on one coaching needs, an information database, and a support system with other chronic illness warriors.

Melinda

IDEAS.TED.COM

Apr 19, 2021 / H. Colleen Sinclair PhD

Angus Greig

This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from people in the TED community; browse through all the posts here. 

The problem of misinformation isn’t going away.

Internet platforms like Facebook and Twitter have taken some steps to curb its spread and say they are working on doing more. But no method yet introduced has been completely successful at removing all misleading content from social media. The best defense, then, is self-defense.

Misleading or outright false information — broadly called “misinformation” — can come from websites pretending to be news outlets, political propaganda or “pseudo-profound” reports that seem meaningful but are not. Disinformation is a type of misinformation that is deliberately generated to maliciously mislead people. Disinformation is intentionally shared, knowing it is false, but misinformation can be shared by people who don’t know it’s not true, especially because people often share links online without thinking.

Emerging psychology research has revealed some tactics that can help protect our society from misinformation. Here are seven strategies you can use to avoid being misled, and to prevent yourself – and others – from spreading inaccuracies.

1. Educate yourself

The best inoculation against what the World Health Organization is calling the “infodemic” is to understand the tricks that agents of disinformation are using to try to manipulate you.

One strategy is called “prebunking” — a type of debunking that happens before you hear myths and lies. Research has shown that familiarizing yourself with the tricks of the disinformation trade can help you recognize false stories when you encounter them, making you less susceptible to those tricks.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed an online game called “Bad News,” which their studies have shown can improve players’ identification of falsehoods.

In addition to the game, you can also learn more about how internet and social media platforms work, so you better understand the tools available to people seeking to manipulate you. You can also learn more about scientific research and standards of evidence, which can help you be less susceptible to lies and misleading statements about health-related and scientific topics.

2. Recognize your vulnerabilities

The prebunking approach works for people across the political spectrum, but it turns out that people who underestimate their biases are actually more vulnerable to being misled than people who acknowledge their biases.

Research has found people are more susceptible to misinformation that aligns with their preexisting views. This is called “confirmation bias,” because a person is biased toward believing information that confirms what they already believe.

The lesson is to be particularly critical of information from groups or people with whom you agree or find yourself aligned – whether politically, religiously, or by ethnicity or nationality. Remind yourself to look for other points of view, and other sources with information on the same topic.

It is especially important to be honest with yourself about what your biases are. Many people assume others are biased, but believe they themselves are not— and imagine that others are more likely to share misinformation than they themselves are.

3. Consider the source

Media outlets have a range of biases. The Media Bias Chart describes which outlets are most and least partisan as well as how reliable they are at reporting facts.

You can play an online game called “Fakey” to see how susceptible you are to different ways news is presented online.

When consuming news, make sure you know how trustworthy the source is or whether it’s not trustworthy at all. Double-check stories from other sources with low biases and high fact ratings to find out who — and what — you can actually trust, rather than just what your gut tells you.

Also, be aware that some disinformation agents make fake sites that look like real news sources – so make sure you’re conscious of which site you are actually visiting. Engaging in this level of thinking about your own thinkinghas been shown to improve your ability to tell fact from fiction.

4. Take a pause

When most people go online, especially on social media, they’re there for entertainment, connection or even distraction. Accuracy isn’t always high on the priority list. Yet few want to be a liar, and the costs of sharing misinformationcan be high – to individuals, their relationships and society as a whole. Before you decide to share something, take a moment to remind yourself of the value you place on truth and accuracy.

Thinking “is what I am sharing true?” can help you stop the spread of misinformation and will encourage you to look beyond the headline and potentially fact-check before sharing.

Even if you don’t think specifically about accuracy, just taking a pause before sharing can give you a chance for your mind to catch up with your emotions. Ask yourself whether you really want to share it, and if so, why. Think about what the potential consequences of sharing it might be.

Research shows that most misinformation is shared quickly and without much thought. The impulse to share without thinking can even be more powerful than partisan sharing tendencies. Take your time. There is no hurry. You are not a breaking-news organization upon whom thousands depend for immediate information.

5. Be aware of your emotions

People often share things because of their gut reactions, rather than the conclusions of critical thinking. In a recent study, researchers found that people who viewed their social media feed while in an emotional mindset were significantly more likely to share misinformation than those who went in with a more rational state of mind.

Anger and anxiety, in particular, make people more vulnerable to falling for misinformation.

6. If you see something, say something

Stand up to misinformation publicly. It may feel uncomfortable to challenge your friends online, especially if you fear conflict. The person to whom you respond with a link to a Snopes post or other fact-checking site may not appreciate being called out.

But evidence shows that explicitly critiquing the specific reasoning in the post and providing counterevidence like a link about how it is fake is an effective technique.

Even short-format refutations — like “this isn’t true” — are more effective than saying nothing. Humor — though not ridicule of the person — can work, too. When actual people correct misinformation online, it can be as effective, if not more so, as when a social media company labels something as questionable.

People trust other humans more than algorithms and bots, especially those in our own social circles. That’s particularly true if you have expertise in the subject or are a close connection with the person who shared it.

An additional benefit is that public debunking notifies other viewers that they may want to look more closely before choosing to share it themselves. So even if you don’t discourage the original poster, you are discouraging others.

7. If you see someone else stand up, stand with them

If you see someone else has posted that a story is false, don’t say “well, they beat me to it so I don’t need to.” When more people chime in on a post as being false, it signals that sharing misinformation is frowned upon by the group more generally.

Stand with those who stand up. If you don’t and something gets shared over and over, that reinforces people’s beliefs that it is OK to share misinformation — because everyone else is doing it, and only a few, if any, are objecting.

Allowing misinformation to spread also makes it more likely that even more people will start to believe it — because people come to believe things they hear repeatedly, even if they know at first they’re not true.

There is no perfect solution. Some misinformation is harder to counter than others, and some countering tactics are more effective at different times or for different people. But you can go a long way toward protecting yourself and those in your social networks from confusion, deception and falsehood.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Watch H. Colleen Sinclair‘s TEDxTU talk here:https://www.youtube.com/embed/an8OJQDeXYo?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

H. Colleen Sinclair PhD is an Associate Professor of Social Psychology at Mississippi State University. Her research focuses on interpersonal relationships, social influence and misinformation.