I am back, my apologies for disappearing for a bit there. For lack of a better explanation, I temporarily misplaced my voice. So we are clear I didn’t physically lose my voice, I temporarily silenced my voice in order to regroup, rebound, and otherwise get through a difficult time. Last week I experienced a challenge in the form of critical feedback that I was not expecting and it kind of knocked me off of my horse, until now I haven’t been able to get back on and continue my ride. Today’s post is an attempt to share with you a little about the situation, how I worked through the challenges associated with criticisms and judgements, where I am now because of the journey to find my voice once again, and to make peace with the criticisms and judgements so I can move forward.
In order to adequately explain what happened I have a little back story. For most of my life I have been in search of my voice, my true identity, and experiences that were mine that I can share with the world thereby sharing myself with the world. In many cases through my journey to find myself and most importantly my voice I was frequently derailed by people in my life who sought to “teach me how the world is” and to “snap me back into reality”. They would share negative feedback with me and tell me I was doing everything wrong. I guess I started believing those voices telling me that I was nothing special and I would never amount to anything. I bought what they were selling completely. I got the idea that they could detect a defect in me that I was unable to see. I believed them because I knew they must know more that I do about me. I wholly gave over myself to others and resigned myself to the fact that they were the ones who would shape me now. How did this manifest in my life? I would rarely share an opinion with others unless I knew they shared that opinion. I rarely argued because I knew in my heart that I was always wrong. This opened me up to falling prey to people who sought to manipulate me and be negative presences in my life.
Now that I am attempting to rediscover myself and establishing my real identity, I have discovered that I am someone who has been emotionally battered and bruised. But I have not been defeated. I am still establishing who I am. I am still relatively cautious about how I use my voice and for what purpose, but I am more and more comfortable with using my voice.
In my journey working with my life coach, I am infinitely more comfortable using my voice. I am determined to not continue to make assumptions about what others think about me and not believe those assumptions to be the absolute truth. Now I find myself in an ongoing period of discovery and I am developing the kind of emotional intelligence that I want to have. It is still very difficult for me, and the challenge I received last week illustrate this quite nicely.
Last week I received negative and critical feedback in an email from a colleague. The feedback was not only negative but also seemed to be judgmental, and worst of all it was a complete surprise. I do not like surprises especially when it involves feedback. I believe if you have information that I could have used months earlier to improve my former colleague’s experience and my performance, why would you not express it in the moment?
This critical feedback was the first significant challenge to my voice and to my sense of self with my work that I have received since I have transitioned from working with my coach to working with myself on myself. After the shock and surprise wore off I was determined to use the strategies I learned while working with my coach to help me work through it. I closed the email, I attempted to distract myself with other projects, I took a walk, and I called some of my people to get their takes on the situation. But nothing would adequately stop the criticisms from swirling around in my head and all the while the criticisms and judgements shouted at me from my memory.
In the past I would have completely shut down to protect myself. I believed that if one person thinks this way about me EVERYONE must see it too. I have done this in the past, I would emotionally disappear from my life. A little tip, it is really difficult to be authentic when you are attempting to be emotionally void. In order to try to carry on like nothing was wrong I would act my way through situations, I would attempt to fake authenticity, which is the worst oxymoron I have ever heard.
In the current situation I decided to temporarily misplace my voice to retreat into myself (get out of my head) and search myself for how I wanted to proceed, and how I would respond. Most of all, I needed to use this period of misplaced voice to figure out how move forward and reclaim my voice once I got right with everything. And that is what I did. I also spent a good amount of time wondering: Would I be able to rebound? Could I come out of this stronger? Would my voice return to a similar strength or stronger than before?
Today I can say that I have been able to come through this challenging time. I am a little bruised but I am healing nicely and my voice is coming back. I will continue to evaluate my response to challenges and find ways to strengthen my voice – for now I will write, for now I will put my thoughts out there and be as authentic as I can be, for now I will vow not to be afraid of who I am and definitely will not be afraid of what others think about me. I will get to a place where I can sit with my voice and let it say what it needs to say. I will take my voice out for a spin every now and again. I will continue to reclaim my voice as a spectacular banner for my identity and wave it proudly! After all “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw
spectaculareveryday 