How do you become compassionately attentive to the value of your own voice?

The holidays have ended. Only the clean-up remains: taking ornaments off the tree, clearing the candle wax out of the hanukkiah, moving furniture back into place now that parties are over, and the guests gone. 

Here we are in the New Year: 2020. It’s the only time in ​history w​ e’ll be able to joke about always having perfect vision. Yeah, no pressure.

2019 was a rough year. Two distinctly different experiences ran roughshod through the world. We were more connected than ever through social media and technology. We were also anxious, conflicted, and bombarded by the noise and shouting that happens online (and sometimes offline.) From the microscopic (CRISPR gene editing and immunology) to the universal (the first image of a black hole and climate change,) a LOT happened in 2019. And that’s just the ​newsfeeds​, not to mention how those tailored news stories showed up on our phones, our computers, in our personal conversations, our relationships, our lives.

During the last few days of 2019, someone said to me, “I really want to be involved in my own life, like, all of my life, not only the convenient bits. But there’s so much noise and shouting where folks seem convinced that they’re completely right and everyone else is stupid. So next year, I don’t want to give up on my own voice. But I don’t really know what that means anymore.”

How do we become compassionately attentive to the value of our own voice?

How will we know what we believe or who we see ourselves to be if we aren’t able to distinguish between what the world says we should be and who we feel ourselves to be?

First, we orient ourselves in our lives. Like orienting our Personal Compass Rose, we identify the direction we’re headed and find our own true north of who we feel ourselves to be.

With this intimate knowledge of ourselves, we can begin to discover what’s around us and discern our own words for Our Experience rather than overlaying society’s terminology onto what we believe.

What a radical thought that who we feel ourselves to be in our lives may be different from what society dictates. What we perceive to be happening in our experience of our lives may be different from what society says is happening.

In my work as an Encouragement Coach, metaphors and creativity form the foundation of my work with clients:

Every story of your life is one thread within the tapestry of your experience. 

Storm winds may blow through your life, but the bedrock of You holds firm.

Your history rhymes and within that rhyme is the change you seek.

The landscape of your life is a lot bigger than the lawn society gave you, revealing vistas broader and more beautiful than anything you thought possible.

Because once we see the bigger picture of our own life, we can each begin to live into all the corners of our own experience. And then, we can become the hero of our own legendary life.