Everything we hear is an opinion not the fact, everything we see is a perception not the truth.

With the rise of social networks we have become very loud and confident in raising our opinions. This obviously has many benefits but at the same time such independence becomes a two-edged sword sometimes. The opinion maker destroys others as well as himself. We often do not care for the quality of information we have about the topics and we start judging others. In other words we give the benefit-of-doubt to ourselves but refuse the same to our opponents.

A typical example from our everyday facebook stream, a few days back I read a post on facebook where the "opnion maker" slammed some of his friends for being "fb scholars" and not researching a topic before sharing their opinions (I will not tag that post here to avoid public ridicule of my friend :)).

He said he had done a little research and has found the facts about the controversy in question. I got interested in his so-called "research" and started reading his facts but I quit reading it in less than a minute because he was also being the same fb-scholar type. What he did was to paste a few biased and opinionated articles from some blogs and claiming that he had done "research".

There was nothing like what is the authenticity of his information etc. If you want to correct someone you need to provide correct "authentic" information. But nowadays everyone get information right or wrong from internet. How do we check if it is correct? We can't travel thousands of miles to actually see what is happening and also we can't have our "authentic" sources everywhere.

Then what is the solution?

Simple,

1. Don't be judgmental, everyone has his own perspective which might not be known to you. Let them have it.
2. Don't take your wishful thinking as facts. You might like to believe in something that looks wrong to others. You don't need to impose it, just live your life with your own beliefs.
3. Don't try to impose your opinions onto others, you are not responsible for the rest of the world.
4. Be respectful
   You have every right to post anything to your social networks but same is the right of others as well. Respect their opinions and they will respect your's
5. Be inspiring
   If you want to look "scholar", be one first. You can't tell the world that you are an expert, it's your continuous excellence of your ideas and your contribution that make the world believe in you. And once people start believing you, you don't need to show off, you already are a shining star.

Words have tremendous power to influence, use them wisely. You can look at the below excellent speech from Toastmaster's 2015 world champion on the power of words.

"Everything we hear is an opinion not the fact, everything we see is a perception not the truth."

P.S: The post is just my opinion, you have every right to agree or disagree. :)