Do You Know Your Voice?
I took IG & FB off my phone.
It’s August. The air is like soup. The last thing I want is a person yelling at me to buy things I don’t need, or telling me to care about something that I likely already care about.
The vast echo chamber is loud, reverberating, and ever-present. I don’t want to do it anymore.
Do I miss knowing if my favorite biscuit is available at Fat Rabbit today? Am I less looped in on the quirky, vibrant happenings of my creative city? Do I have a little FOMO?
Yep
At the same time, I don’t want to trade my peace for the programming that happens every time I open an app and start scrolling. (Anyone else six videos deep before they realize what they’re doing? Just me? Didn’t think so…)
I’m not a technophobe. My first real job when I was 17 was working in the Advanced Technology Lab for a major financial services firm. (Made real by the fact that I had to pay taxes.)
Amongst the brilliant minds researching fuzzy logic, neural networks, artificial intelligence, case-based reasoning, robotics, and more, I was fascinated with the forecast of tech to come. That experience anchored me in curiosity, creativity, and strategy — and taught me how to work collaboratively within systems, while questioning how they could evolve. (That small office of innovators is the reason all your credit cards have smart chips, by the way.)
I view technology as a tool, especially for communication.
It has made our lives easier in many ways, but it also has added millions of voices in our ears. The rapid evolution of social media platforms has inundated our systems (which aren’t equipped), strained our physical world (with finite resources), and impacted humanity as a whole ( especially our cultures and sentiments) in ways that we’re just beginning to understand.
We were never meant to know everything.
We weren’t built to process and meaningfully react to global crises being launched at us in 10-second snippets.
We don’t have the capacity, resources, and support to decipher and intelligently navigate everything, all at once, all the time.
Access to endless people telling us what to do, where to be, what to prioritize, how to think, how to act, how to react, and who to be can make the real-life things happening in our lives and right outside our doors feel overwhelming, unimportant, uninteresting, or impossible to navigate.
But that’s what life is: both monumental and mundane.
In all of my work with clients, whether I’m doing a global rebrand for a technology solutions partner or strategic coaching on life and work for an evolving human, there always comes a moment when the inner voice is drowned out by what the voices in the world are saying.
I’ve noticed it in my own life recently, too, hence the social media pause.
I believe we have an obligation to listen and act upon the things shaping our world, but if we don’t pause to be present in our own sphere of influence, we aren’t doing ourselves — or anyone — any good.
Will I be back on social media again? Of course! At this point, sending memes to people I love so we can virtually cackle together is a shared experience.
But, as I broaden my listening ears over the next few weeks, I’m going to remember that being a good universal citizen of the world starts on the inside.
Knowing our own voice isn’t about putting our head in the sand; it’s about remembering what we value and can impact given our capacities and reach.
What are you lending your ears to lately? How about your voice? Is it yours, or something you think you “should” be doing because someone told you so?
I’d love to hear.
Happy listening,
Michelle
P.S. I forgot my phone today and left my house for hours. It was glorious.
P.P.S. I’m speaking about Authentic Voice & Executive Presence at the Virginia Society for CPA’s Women’s Collective next week. You should come.
I speak on alignment, voice, authenticity, strategy, and all things communications-related for companies and groups. Interested in developing something meaningful? Let’s connect!
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I speak. I write. I strategize. I coach. Whether one-to-one or in a global organization, I help people remember who they are, what they’re here for, and take actions to make meaningful progress.
Seek yourself. Be more you.
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