You Find Your Voice by Using It
What I Keep Getting Wrong About This
For a long time I thought voice was something you either had or didn’t. That some people were just built more direct, more sure, more themselves, and the rest of us were waiting our turn.
A year and a half into this podcast, I don’t believe that anymore.
Almost everyone I’ve sat across from has some version of the same story: a moment where they said the thing anyway, survived it, and were slightly different afterward.
Nobody describes arriving somewhere.
The Room Doesn’t Get to Edit You
I read rooms constantly. Who’s in charge, what the unspoken rules are, what version of me is going to land best.
That instinct isn’t the problem.
The problem is when reading a room turns into letting it rewrite you, quietly trading in whatever made you distinct for whatever seems safest.
Michelle Serna’s episode has stuck with me for this reason. She didn’t find her footing by matching the room. She found it by trusting that what set her apart from everyone in it was exactly what the room needed.
Brittany Burke put a line on this that I haven’t stopped repeating to myself: you have one version of me, and that has to be enough.
Not a work self and a friend self and a conference self, each one a slightly edited release.
Just one.
Courage Is a Repetition, Not a Reveal
Jenn Rinfret talks about bravery in the smallest possible units: a conversation started, a one percent change made, and that’s changed how I think about this too.
Nobody hands you a finished voice to go use.
You use an unfinished one, out loud, before you’re ready, and you find out you survived it. Then you do it again.
That’s the whole mechanism.
Danielle McNamee’s episode added the piece I’d been missing: that saying “I’m struggling” out loud isn’t oversharing. It’s just accuracy. And accuracy is where trust starts, both other people’s trust in you and your own.
Some of the most important things I’ve figured out, I’ve figured out by saying them out loud.
What This Show Has Given Me Instead
The unexpected gift of doing this podcast is hearing myself finish a thought I didn’t know I’d started.
I’ll ask a guest something and land somewhere in their answer that surprises me. Sometimes I hear myself say something back and realize I didn’t know I believed it until I heard myself say it.
That’s made me think community matters less for the advice it hands you and more for the room it gives you to think without an audience yet.
People who let you say the unfinished thing. Who don’t immediately tell you what you should think. Who let you change your mind. Who listen long enough for you to hear yourself.
Tiffany Allen’s conversation about legacy reframed this for me too. We treat legacy like a monument built later. It’s actually just today, in what gets said and what gets swallowed, in who gets encouraged, who gets defended, and who gets named in a room they haven’t walked into yet.
Our voices are part of that ripple.
And once you have a voice in the room, the question changes a little.
It isn’t only, am I willing to use it?
It’s what am I using it for?
You Find Your Voice by Using It
A few weeks ago, I wrote about learning to trust my own voice.
I’ve kept thinking about that since.
What I understand now is that the trust didn’t come first. I didn’t suddenly become sure of myself and then start speaking differently.
I used my voice before I was completely sure of it.
I said the thing, asked the question, let the unfinished thought out, and little by little, I learned I could trust what came out of my own mouth.
Maybe that’s why “finding your voice” has started to feel like the wrong way to describe it.
You don’t find it and then use it. You find it by using it.
And maybe there’s another piece of this too. There are probably things you’ve been saying your whole life. Ideas you keep circling back to. Things you care about enough that you can’t quite leave them alone.
Maybe those things are your voice too. So if you’re still looking for yours, start there. Pay attention to what keeps coming back. The thing you care about enough to say even when the room isn’t quite ready for it.
And then say it. Your voice doesn’t have to be finished before you use it. Maybe it’s been there longer than you realize.
Using it is how you learn to recognize it, trust it, and eventually stop asking the room for permission to say it.
Listen/watch this episode:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finding-your-voice-a-little-at-a-time-with-kcb/id1835167771?i=1000789562747
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2DyaTm03sZG04fMu2Zfjgf?si=c7f7db6413a6479a
Listen on YouTube: https://youtu.be/kJ3Gy7KEMgU?si=lQciVzJ2kHk5XNpZ
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/bFL1wkGjoo0?si=UT1FB8RGyvACSKJr
Check out these previous episodes:
Build the Table~Michelle Serna
When Career and Life Grow Together ~ Brittany Burke
Lead with Empathy, Adapt with Purpose with Jenn Rinfret
People First: Resilience, Authenticity, and the Art of the Frenemy ~ with Danielle McNamee
