Whose Voice is Loudest In Your Life?
Making your voice more prominent than the voices of others makes it infinitely more possible to maximize your total gift of a life.
You know those people who never ask for advice, make every decision confidently, and never second-guess their decisions, confident that this situation will work out for them just as amazingly as everything else has? Those people really need to take up a sport at which they’re truly awful so the rest of us late bloomers can like them better. I recommend pickleball for a very humbling but very fun sport.
I’ve asked for and received lots of advice in my life. Too much honestly. Much of it has been unsolicited, but I’ve also done way too much asking. This at times made the voices of others much louder in my life than my own voice. And when your own voice is quiet, it’s tough to hear—obviously—and even harder to trust.
In the prolonged chapter of exploration I’m doing, it’s been pretty cool to hear more of my own voice. Sometimes I wish other people had my answers for me, but they don’t. Oh they might have loads of ideas, but it’s my job to know what’s best for me or what I want. Just like it’s your job to know what I want.
Just kidding! It’s only your job to make your own decisions with your gift of a life and discover what you want. And to explore and try lots of stuff and to refine and trust the answers you’re getting. As I think about dreamers stuck in corporate or actively trying to build their own thing, I wonder whose voice is currently influencing your decisions most? Is it yours?
Is the goal for us to never consult with others? Or to never be influenced by others? Heck no. It’s a great idea to consult with people who know stuff, who can teach tools and techniques, who have been places you haven’t been literally or figuratively.
Some of my best life and business ideas have actually come through other people—places I might like to travel (thanks, Tia), book title ideas (thanks, Bonnie and Aitza), suggestions to prioritize myself in a way I wasn’t doing on my own (thanks, Dad).
Speaking of my dad, it was a simple idea from a customer that changed my dad’s custom seat cover manufacturing business in a huge way. And a friend told me years ago about his friend who invested a chunk of money in a new company which went on to be called Google. Said friend was influenced “against his better judgment” by the advice of a friend. I don’t think he ended up minding that unsolicited advice.
In the following passage, Frederick Buechner is writing about discovering which of the fiction characters you write are major and which ones are minor, and being open to them changing. But then he shares this little nugget which is so relatable to this conversation:
It may take you many years to find out that the stranger you talked to once for half an hour in the railroad station may have done more to point you to where your true homeland lies than your priest or your best friend or even your psychiatrist.1
So yes, we will absolutely continue to be influenced by others. And hooray for that! But I believe that God gave you and me our unique lives, and if that’s the case He must have thought we could uniquely make something of them, don’t you think?
We can forget this, though, when we let the voices of others drown out our own. When we do, we compromise and quiet our built-in, God-given intuition. In a noisy, hyperconnected digital world, the latter seems to be the default setting. It takes intention to create the order and stillness we need to let our own voice be louder than the voices of others. And to hear the genius in off-hand ideas that come through other people.
It takes intention to create the order and stillness we need to let our own voice be louder than the voices of others.
This quote has been a favorite quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson ever since college. I took a semester-long course on his writings, struggled immensely, but loved it and Ralph became a friend for life.
The power which resides in [each person] is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried…Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
16 months of travel has been very good for breaking up with advice-seeking. I still have a ways to go and we’re very much still in this together, but progress has been made, my friends. Progress has been made! I still get advice, much of which I’m grateful for, and I still ask for it. But I ask for much less these days. Like I said, progress has been made.
Here’s some of what I’ve learned:
Wander around foreign countries where you don’t speak the language. It’s much harder to seek or be given non-essential advice when you don’t speak the language.
Follow way fewer people on social media and be there way less. Limit the inputs.
Be direct about asking for advice from the people whose perspectives you value. Let them know you’re making a decision—keeping decision-making solidly in your court—but that you would appreciate their thoughts.
Give a preface when you are just sharing something and don’t need fixing or ideas.
Thank people for sharing unsolicited advice, and respond with something that indicates you realize this is your decision. “Hey, thanks for sharing your perspective. I’ll think about that.”
Don’t share your decision-making with too many people. Decide, take action, inform later (if even necessary).
Remind yourself that this is your life and there’s no better person more qualified to make something wonderful of it than you.
Read more books or at least long-form writing. There’s something about reading substantial things that gives you time to think about what you think about this subject and glean from it what you need.
In my travels, I’ve met many artists. And it’s finally dawning on me—I’m very quick— what is the distinguishing trait of an artist and true creator. And that is, they create from an internal source. Sure, they might study techniques and work with mentors and teachers and change their styles and evolve as they get to know their artistic voice more and more, but the things they uniquely create come from inside them. They have to, for it to be art.
They might start by copying, but it always progresses as they trust their ideas, their creativity, their creative abilities, their voice. And that’s why we dreamers need to make sure the voices of others are not drowning out our own—we’ve got some big things of our own to create.
I’d love to know your thoughts on all this. What have you learned or what are you seeing in your own life about trusting your own voice over those of others? Where could you be trusting your voice more?
As quoted in my new favorite book: Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird p. 51.