Finding Your Voice

In a society where everyone is given the opportunity to have an audience, it can be challenging to know whom to listen to and what your own opinions are.

Just a shameless self-promotion here... which proves my initial point.

Everyone has the opportunity to broadcast their opinions to the world, with modern-day technology at our fingertips and random profiles on social media blowing up in popularity every day. This has become a recent constant thought in my mind - who should I actually be listening to?

As my mom would say to me and my sister growing up "Garbage in, garbage out" - meaning that the negative things we were taking in, watching, and listening to, would later show in our own lives. Whether it is through my attitude or how I handle situations, I am able to recognize now what is causing this negative downward spiral. When I watch sermons online or listen to podcasts that have hopeful or thought-provoking conversations, I tend to have a happier attitude; sometimes being more productive or even more creative in my hobbies.

When I'm filling my head with a boat-load of nonsense tv, like reality shows or random youtube videos, I tend to find my whole personality shifts, my aura becomes like a dark cloud (hello my lovely spiritual readers) and I end up in a constant cycle of continuing to watch this trash tv.

Applying this concept of "Garbage in, garbage out" to our own social medias, I think we would all be quite happier. There are multiple times a year when I "clean" my social media feeds by unfollowing accounts that no longer contribute to my life. Recently it's been swapping out celebrities and influencers in order to focus my feed on accounts that promote sustainability, conversations about mental health, and content that I feel I can apply to my life in order to better myself as an overall contributing human to society.

Honestly, sometimes I feel guilty - when I unfollow someone I've followed since freshman year of high school. Or sometimes it's quite brutal - "unfollow, unfollow, unfollow..." Every time though, I feel like a weight is lifted off my back as if I had let something go that I no longer needed to carry; in a sense, this is exactly what I did.

Now how does following someone else affect how you form your own opinions? I kind of already covered it with "garbage in, garbage out"; what you take in you will produce. If we aren't open to listening to multiple sides of the conversation, if we close our ears and only listen to those opinions that we agree with, then we can never learn. Karl Weick says to "fight as if you're right. Listen as if you're wrong". (Now I have no idea who Karl is, I found the quote on Pinterest, but my education has taught me plagiarism is WRONG). You should be confident in your opinions and stand firm, but be willing to accept the FACT that they are OPINIONS.

I struggle with this myself, I can be very stubborn; to the point where I may start to argue in circles, getting nowhere. But I'm trying to be better, the way I'm doing this is by taking in other people's EDUCATED opinions. (If I'm trying to learn calculus why would I listen to someone who is only educated in math as far as algebra? Short answer: I wouldn't, and neither should you).

If you're curious about a topic, then learn about it. Research is only boring when it's forced onto you (and if you're someone like me it's only boring when you make it boring. After my Invertebrate Zoology class I now find the Cephalopod and Mollusca groups to be quite fascinating). If you can't relate to someone with mental health struggles but want to be there for them, DO YOUR RESEARCH - there is nothing worse than hearing from someone who doesn't struggle with anxiety that "you'll get over it". If you find talk about politics quite stupid (welcome to the club) but do agree that systems in our country need to change, find a podcaster that explains those topics in a fun and engaging way (The Staying Up Podcast - Life Lessons with Megan Batoon is a great starter episode for this). If you're only now becoming concerned about the environment and the human impact, follow @KeepNatureWild on Instagram, and listen to their podcast The Warm Up.

Sometimes you can feel stuck in the opinions or beliefs that were pushed onto you as you were raised. It's what your parents believe and think, it's how they raised us to believe and think; it can be challenging or even guilt-provoking to even think about processing the same information into a different opinion. Something I'm learning even now is to form my own opinions, but I won't stand strong in one until I know that I've done enough research to support it; until then when the topic comes up I'll ask the questions (not only does this give you the power to direct the conversation, but hopefully you might learn something too).

For now I leave you with this summary, "Garbage in, garbage out", if you don't know then LEARN, forming new opinions can be scary but it's not a bad thing.

And if you want some more feel-good content about the adventures in our daily lives and lessons learned, check out my podcast "Diggin' It".

Now go out into the world my fellow hippies and brighten up your own aura.

- M