38: Real Voice. Real Connection.

Listen Now

Episode Transcription

 Welcome back to another episode of the road to life podcast with MacKay and Bennett. This week we're talking about finding your voice. And for us, it comes through a story in our business, where we, we lost or didn't really identify our own voice. When we were starting our business, we got coaching, obviously, business help and copywriting help and all that stuff to get our message out to the world.

And what we failed to do, that we learned from, was we didn't have our authentic voice. Like we were taking what other people told us should be our message and just putting it out there.

Yeah. We were incredibly coachable. Yeah.

And we've talked about that in another episode of being coachable, but not too coachable.

We were too coachable in some of those moments, and it was a real big lesson for us because it never landed for our own voice.

That's the thing. It doesn't land for the people you want to talk to. We want to be talking to people for whom our actual voice lands. So by using the voice of our copywriter, of our coach, of all the different people, we weren't speaking to the people that we wanted to be speaking to.

We were speaking to their people, people for whom their message lands, not our voice and our message. We needed to pump the brakes hard, take a step back and figure out what is our voice. We hadn't done that. Figure out how we want to communicate, what we want to say, the style, all of those things.

Then, it was a big job to, you know, rewrite all of our existing copy for our business, you know, and all the different places.

Yeah. The big lesson we took is that you know, you have to be authentic to you And I think it translates also into, because we can talk about it in a business perspective, but it it also really got us thinking about how it that manifests in relationships because In a relationship, you do not want to lose yourself.

That's the quickest way to disconnection in your relationship is by disconnecting from yourself. You have to be connected to yourself in order to be connected in a relationship. And the fastest way to lose connection to yourself is to lose who you are, lose your voice, not speak your truth, not have your boundaries, all that sort of thing.

So that's where we're gonna kind of focus the discussion.

It's easy to fall prey to the: "I'll tell them what they want to hear", whether that's early in a relationship or later in a relationship. If you're trying to keep the peace. As a recovering people pleaser, I had a really hard time owning my voice and speaking my truth because I was always trying to communicate what was expected of me, what someone else wanted to hear.

That's one way, I think that we lose our voice in a relationship. I also think early in relationships, we communicate what we think the other person wants to hear because, you know, we want to go on a second date, or we want, you know, we, we want to have that relationship that we see potential with, but if we're not communicating, if we're not showing up as our authentic self, we're never going to have the relationship where we're actually connected to that other human being because You can't connect to me if you don't see me and know me.

And if you're lying to get that second date, they're dating someone else. They're not dating you. They're dating the person that you're trying to be.

Right. And so early days when you asked me if I like Star Wars or not, I took a time out and had a pause like, Oh, he probably likes Star Wars.

I should probably say I like Star Wars cause I like this guy. But I didn't, thankfully, in the end, because you also don't like Star Wars.

I know, I don't care. I don't care about Star Wars at all.

But I could see how easily it happens where you show up, and I did it before, you show up as someone that's not actually you so that the other person will like you.

And whether that's in your marriage, whether that's in your romantic relationships, whether that's in a work capacity with colleagues or bosses, or friends or whoever, when you show up as the person you think they want you to be, That's not showing up as you so you're never going to feel that sense of belonging You're always going to be trying to fit in you're never going to be truly connected to another person.

And it just we've talked so much about the feeling of unworthiness throughout society and it just compounds that when you are trying to be someone else you're telling yourself that who you are is not good enough... just another brick in the wall of, I'm not good enough.

And when someone responds positively to the facade you've put up, if someone shows love to that person that you're showing up as, which isn't you, then that love doesn't land for you. So even though your relationship may appear on the surface to be strong and, on Instagram, it looks great.

The love you're being shown isn't landing for you, because it's not being shown to you. It's being shown to the person that you are trying to be trying to be. What that requires is a level of vulnerability that we're all pretty uncomfortable with. Part of the point of vulnerability is that it's uncomfortable because there's emotional exposure and risk.

That's what vulnerability is. And so in order to be vulnerable, there has to be some level of exposure on your behalf and risk on your behalf. And both of those things create discomfort. In order to be connected to another human being, There's gonna be some level of discomfort required, which goes back to what we talked about before, that discomfort is a skill you can practice.

The easiest way to practice it is by taking a, turning the water to cold in your shower every day gets you used to doing the hard thing. Taking the stairs gets you used to doing the hard thing. But, finding some way to practice that level of vulnerability, showing up, telling your person what's on your mind, letting them in... especially for entrepreneurs who are trying to build a business and run a successful business and build this life that they've envisioned for themselves when they embarked on this entrepreneurial journey, there's a lot of stress that comes with it. There's a lot of, there's a lot that comes with it. And I think with the best of intentions, most of us, are trying to do it all the best we can and take on all of that stress and protect our family from it. I'll get this figured out.

Shouldering the load. Yeah. You're taking it on with the best of intentions to protect your family, your spouse from what's going on with the business, from the stress, from the failures, from the obstacles, from the downturn in the econ... From it all. But every time you do that, You're not being vulnerable with your partner.

You're not showing up as your authentic self. You're not sharing that with them.

And you're not being your true authentic self. You're withholding the fears that you have, the thoughts that are going through your mind, the worries, the, even the wins. I mean, maybe we're a little bit more used to sharing the wins, but I think as a society, we don't even celebrate our wins enough.

Every time we, dim our own light or don't share the fear or the thing that's going on in our minds, the less of our true essence that we're being. And every time you do that, you're disconnecting, you're not making that connection with your spouse. And the more you do that, the more disconnected you get and the further you just drive a wedge.

Your voice, who you are, is: what you're afraid of, it is what you failed at, it is the small wins that you think aren't worth celebrating, it is all the stresses, what's keeping you up at night. It's all of those things. And if we're unwilling to share those things and share what's really going on with us in our true inner inside voice, if we're not willing to use that with our spouse, with our partner, then it's another brick in the wall.

The distance between you gets wider. Whether it's in your business, using your authentic voice, your true voice, getting your message out there to your people, to attract your people, to you, to get your gift out to the world, or it's in your relationship, showing up as who you actually are, sharing what's actually going on with you, expressing your inner voice to your partner.

And when you do that, it gives them the freedom and the safety to also do that. Now you have two individuals who are being their true authentic selves with each other. And that just builds such a bond and such a strength and connection that it's an 'us versus the world' energy between you and putting yourself on the same team.

Yeah. And by withholding and not doing it, you're getting the opposite. You're disconnecting, you're driving that wedge and it's never serving you. it was just really cool lesson that we had learned...

the hard way as we do.

Yeah. I mean, we always learn lessons. Sometimes, you know, sometimes we learn them from other people. Sometimes you have to go through and experience yourself to learn them.

Sometimes you have to go through and experience more than once to learn them. Yeah. If you're a bit of a slow learner sometimes. Yeah.

And sometimes the universe sees fit to share it with you more than once. And in our case, we, we've been shown several lessons more than once. This one is maybe one of those, but we're in a good place now with identifying our voice and sharing our voice and

it got us thinking how this applies to relationships and how so many people have a similar issue. Finding your voice is an issue that's universal and it's, and I think everyone struggles with it at least at some point, whether it's in relationships, business or something else, other areas of their life.

And then the self worth comes in. I think you can apply finding your voice and listening to your voice to every aspect of your life. Yeah. And it was really cool to be able to make those connections . That was the big lesson for me, we need to find our voice... But also oh this applies to so many other areas of life. Oh, it also applies to this relationship. Let's let's talk about that. Let's think about that a little bit more. How does this apply in health, you know all all the different areas?

As entrepreneurs if we can find our voice in all areas and start to listen to it and follow it and share who we really are and what we really want and our fears and our discomforts and getting vulnerable.

That's how we get to the place that we envisioned in our minds when we want it to become an entrepreneur. Like the life, that vision for life that we have with the freedom, the time, freedom, the geography freedom, the financial freedom, all of that, It comes when you understand who you are, what you want, and you're able to go after it and share your true self.

Yeah. It's really important as an entrepreneur to get to that place that you want to go and have the relationship and the marriage that goes along with it, to be able to, get vulnerable and listen to that voice and share what's going on with you so that you can now go and build as a team, that dream life vision that you have for each other.

Well said m'love.

That's it for this week. We'll catch you next time.

 If you loved this episode, we would be really honored if you shared this episode with a friend who might also love this episode. And we will see you next week.