Latest / The Voice: Breaking, Believing, Becoming / Season 2 Episode 2 What Is This Bringing Out In Me?

Transcript

Season 2 Episode 2 What Is This Bringing Out In Me? · The Voice: Breaking, Believing, Becoming

0:10
Welcome back to The Voice, the place where breaking, believing,
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and becoming finally have somewhere to be heard.
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I'm Kim Munoz, and I'm so happy that you're here.
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Every once in a while, I start writing an episode thinking it's about one thing,
0:27
and I realize it's really about something else.
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Actually, not once in a while, pretty much every time.
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That's exactly what happened with this one.
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I sat down, fully intending to talk about social media.
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But the more I wrote, the more I realized this episode really isn't just about social media.
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It's about performance.
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I don't mean standing on a stage. I mean the quiet performance so many of us live every single day.
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The one that says, I'm fine. I've got this. My marriage is great.
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My faith has never been stronger.
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My kids are doing amazing. My business is thriving. My life looks exactly like it should.
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I think we've become incredibly good at performing.
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And I'm not even sure most of us realize when we're doing it.
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Because performance doesn't always come from pride. Sometimes it comes from fear.
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Fear of disappointing people.
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Fear of being misunderstood, or fear that if people knew what was really happening,
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they may think less of us.
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So we edit and polish and filter, and eventually we stop editing just our pictures,
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and we start editing ourselves.
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Isn't it interesting? We spend the first part of our lives encouraging children
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to use their imaginations, to be themselves, to discover what makes them different.
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And then somehow, as adults, we start getting a very different message.
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Fit in. Keep it together. Don't make anyone uncomfortable. Smile.
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Don't let them see you cry.
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Fake it till you make it.
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And along the way, I think we become so accustomed to appearances that we start
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confusing looking okay with actually being okay.
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But those two things, they're not the same.
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Someone can look incredibly successful and be unbelievably lonely.
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Someone can look deeply in love while quietly wondering if their marriage is going to survive.
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Someone can appear completely confident while questioning everything about themselves.
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Life is almost never as simple as it looks from the outside,
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and I'm grateful that I've learned that, because it's definitely made me slower
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to judge, slower to compare, slower to envy.
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Because every person I meet, I know is carrying a story that I don't know anything about.
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And social media has made that incredibly easy to forget.
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We see a vacation, assume we know the marriage. We see a promotion,
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and assume we know the journey that got them there. We see 30 seconds and think
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we've seen someone's life.
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But we haven't. We've seen just a moment, not a whole story.
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Before I go any further, I want to make something clear. When I talk about authenticity,
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I'm not talking about telling everybody everything.
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I actually think somewhere along the way, we've confused authenticity with oversharing,
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and those are not the same thing.
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I mean, let's face it, some things belong between you and God,
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or some things just belong in your family, and some things belong with your
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closest friends. And some things, quite frankly, are nobody else's business.
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Privacy isn't necessarily pretending, and boundaries are not being dishonest.
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Authenticity simply means that the person people do see is actually you,
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not a character you've created or a version of yourself that you're exhausted
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trying to maintain. Just you.
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I've noticed that some of the safest people in my life have something in common.
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They're not constantly trying to impress anyone. They can laugh at themselves,
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they can admit when they're wrong, and they can say, I don't know,
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or I'm struggling, or even I need help.
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And instead of thinking less of them, I usually trust them more.
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I think that's also why I've always leaned on the side of being as transparent
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as I can be about my own life.
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Not because everyone needs to know everything about me, because they certainly don't.
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But I never wanted someone looking at my life from the outside and thinking,
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she's got it all figured out, or her life must be perfect.
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Because it's not, and it never has been. I've struggled, made mistakes,
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had my heart broken, questioned myself more than once.
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I've had seasons when I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.
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And I never wanted someone who was struggling to look at me and think she wouldn't
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understand Or worse, I can't ask her for help because she's never been through
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anything like this That mattered to me.
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Some of the deepest connections in my life have happened when someone was willing to say, me too.
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There's something incredibly freeing about being around people who don't feel
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like they have to perform.
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And maybe that's what we've all been craving, not perfection, but permission.
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Permission to still be learning, healing, still be becoming.
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I know that's certainly true for me.
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I don't sit behind this microphone because I figured life out. Believe me, I haven't.
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I sit here because I've lived enough life to know that pretending never heals
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anything. Only honesty can do that.
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Which brings me back to the sentence that kept running through my mind while
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I was writing this episode.
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I actually wrote it on a sticky note and stuck it in my computer because I didn't want to forget it.
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The opposite of authenticity isn't imperfection, it's performance.
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Once I saw that, I couldn't stop seeing it, including in one of the greatest
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and at times scariest tools we've ever been given, social media.
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Before some of you think this is about to become one of those social media is
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ruining the world conversations, hang with me because it's actually not what I think at all.
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In fact, social media has been one of the greatest blessings in my own life,
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and maybe that's the best place to start.
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Before we go any further, I want to tell you exactly where I stand on social media.
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Because if you've listened to me for any length of time, you know I don't really do extremes.
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I don't think everything is wonderful, and I don't think everything is terrible.
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Usually, the truth lives somewhere in the middle. And that's exactly how I feel about social media.
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It's been an incredible gift to my businesses. long before this podcast ever
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existed, social media helped me build a community through my Pilates studio.
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It allowed me to teach people I never would have met otherwise,
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to encourage them, educate them, stay connected with them long after they walked out of my class.
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And now, years later, here we are, sitting together every week through a microphone.
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This little podcast that I record from home has now reached listeners throughout
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the United States and at least 30 other countries around the world,
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Singapore, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, Italy, Mexico,
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Canada, places I never imagined my voice would reach.
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Think about that for a second. Twenty years ago, building that kind of community
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would have required an enormous marketing budget, television,
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radio, print advertising.
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Now, I can sit in my home, record a conversation that's been on my heart,
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hit publish, and somehow it finds someone across the country or across the world,
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or maybe just someone sitting in their car after a really hard day who needed
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to hear, you're not the only one. That's remarkable to me.
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I've watched social media, reconnect old friends, raise money for families in
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crisis, help people find jobs, start businesses, learn new skills, build communities.
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And send prayers around the world in a matter of minutes. I've lived the good that can come from that.
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So no, it's not an episode about how social media is ruining society,
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because I don't really believe that entirely.
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I think social media is one of the greatest communication tools we've ever been given.
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But like any powerful tool, it can build something, and it can break something.
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And somewhere in between those two is where discernment has to come in.
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There's something people say all the time about social media.
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Don't believe everything you see, and I understand what they mean.
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Of course, we shouldn't assume that a photograph or a 30-second video tells
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us everything about someone's life.
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But I also think we have to be careful with the opposite assumption.
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Because sometimes, once we know how someone's story ends, we go back and we
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look at everything that came before it, and we decide, hmm, it must have all been fake.
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I don't think that's fair either. I've thought about this a lot because of my own life.
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If you were to scroll far enough back through my social media,
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or read some of the blogs I wrote years ago, You would see vacations,
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Christmas mornings, birthdays, family dinners, holidays.
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You would read words I wrote about how madly in love I was with my life.
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The very same life that, in ways, I couldn't fully see yet, was slowly taking pieces of me with it.
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There are pictures where everyone is smiling, laughing, looking genuinely happy.
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And after both of my divorces, someone could easily look back at those pictures
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and say, see, she was pretending.
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And some people did. Even some of my closest friends would ask me,
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why would you post that when you know what's happening behind the scenes?
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And I understand why they wondered, but I can give you two very real examples
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of why those pictures weren't fake to me.
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Not long before my first marriage ended, My husband and I actually renewed our vows in church.
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We hadn't originally had a
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church wedding because he had been deployed to Afghanistan during the war.
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So just five years later, on our anniversary with our one baby,
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being able to stand together in church and make those vows before God meant something to me.
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It wasn't for social media. Well, social media really didn't exist yet,
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but it wasn't a photo opportunity. It was real.
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I stood there believing in those vows, believing in him, believing in us.
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I believed that whatever we had been through, in those five years,
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we were choosing each other again. And then that marriage ended.
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And years later, something remarkably similar happened in my second marriage.
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After what I believed at the time had been my husband's last affair,
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I had taken off my wedding rings.
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There had been so much hurt, so much betrayal That wearing them no longer felt
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honest to me And then on our 21st wedding anniversary He asked me to put our wedding bands back on.
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He wanted to recommit to our marriage, and I said yes, so we put them back on.
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And again, I believed him. I believed that gesture meant what I thought it meant.
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I believed we were recommitting to each other, and I believed we were moving forward.
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What I didn't know at the time was that we weren't simply trying to heal from wounds in the past.
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There were actually several other women in his life that I knew nothing about
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at that very same moment.
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And yet, just six months after asking me to put my wedding ring back on,
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he came home and told me he was confused.
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I wasn't confused.
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I just didn't know what he knew.
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And I think that distinction matters, because when I look back now,
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of course I see things differently.
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I mean, hindsight has information that hope doesn't have.
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But the woman in those pictures didn't have hindsight. She had the information she'd been given.
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She had promises, renewed vows. She had a wedding ring placed back on her fingers.
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She had someone telling her, I'm choosing this marriage.
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So, yeah, if you looked at my social media during either of those periods,
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you might have seen pictures of me smiling.
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You might have read something I wrote about being grateful for my life.
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You might have thought everything looked wonderful.
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Some of my closest friends questioned it because they knew pieces of what had
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happened behind the scenes.
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They were looking at what had already happened. I was looking at what I had
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been promised was going to happen next. That's very different.
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I wasn't trying to convince the world that my marriages were perfect.
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I was trying to believe the people I loved when they told me things were going to be different.
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I believed healing was possible. I believed our family was going to make it.
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I believed the best was still ahead. And I believed my wedding vows.
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But more importantly, I believed his.
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Those smiles weren't fake, they were hopeful. And that's an incredibly important
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distinction when we're looking at somebody else's life from the outside.
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Sometimes what we later call a highlight reel wasn't someone trying to deceive us at all.
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They were living inside a chapter whose ending they didn't know yet.
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They were celebrating a good moment that really was good.
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Believing the apology or the promise, believing the recommitment,
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believing that maybe this time, things really would be different.
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And isn't that what hope does? I mean, hope lives with the information it has today.
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Hindsight gets information hope never had.
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That's why I've become very careful about looking backward at someone's life
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and deciding, oh, she must have known, or that whole thing must have been fake.
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Maybe she didn't know. Maybe it wasn't fake. Maybe she was hopeful.
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And that applies beyond marriages. Sometimes we're documenting a life where,
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we are praying will continue.
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Sometimes we're standing inside a beautiful moment and allowing it to be beautiful,
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even though other parts of our lives are hurting.
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Because life isn't all wonderful, and it isn't all heartbreaking.
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Most of our lives are both.
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The vacation can be wonderful, but the marriage can still be struggling.
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The birthday party can be beautiful, and someone at the table can still be hurting.
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And a family picture can be completely genuine, and the next chapter can still bring incredible loss.
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Both of those things can be true.
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That's something life has taught me over and over again, and it's why I've become
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so much slower to judge what I see online, because a photograph captures a moment,
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not a marriage, not a family, not an entire life, just a moment.
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And yet somehow we've all become little social media investigators trying to
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piece together entire human lives based on what someone did or did not post.
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She hasn't posted him lately. I wonder what's going on.
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Did you notice she wasn't in that picture? Why didn't he like her post?
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We've basically all turned into Gladys Kravitz from Bewitched,
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peeking through the blinds, trying to figure out what's happening at the neighbor's house.
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And if you have absolutely no idea who Gladys Kravitz is, well,
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I've officially dated myself. Google her.
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And apparently, I'm not exempt from any of this, because just the other day,
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I got my own little reminder of how quickly we can see something on social media
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and decide we know exactly what happened.
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I schedule most of my social media ahead of time, so half the time,
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something post, I've forgotten it was even coming.
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Well, yesterday morning, a video of me popped up, and I looked at it and thought,
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hello, where did those come from?
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Apparently, the angle, the outfit, the lighting, the alignment of the planets,
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I don't know what happened, but my breasts looked considerably more enthusiastic,
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than they actually are in real life.
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And listen, I noticed it, but apparently I was not alone, because then the texts
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started coming, and the messages, people actually asking me about my breasts.
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Had I done something? Was there something new? And suddenly I'm thinking,
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are we really doing a breaking news investigation into my chest this morning?
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And eventually, I decided to post a disclaimer, because apparently I felt responsible
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for putting everyone's mind at ease so they could all sleep better that night.
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No, I have not had my breasts done. Mystery solved. You're welcome, America.
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But as funny as it was, it was also the perfect example of exactly what we've been talking about.
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People saw something, something looked different, and immediately there was a story. There had to be.
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And listen, this one was harmless. It was funny. I laughed about it.
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But it made me think about how often we do this with things that aren't harmless.
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We see a picture, a facial expression, a person missing from a photograph,
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a wedding ring that suddenly isn't there, someone who hasn't posted their spouse
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in three weeks, and our brains immediately start filling in the blanks.
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Sometimes we're right. Sometimes we're completely wrong. And sometimes it's just a really good bra.
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And maybe that's the reminder. what we see may be real, our interpretation of
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what we see may not be, because a picture can absolutely capture the truth of
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a moment without telling us the whole truth of a life,
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and apparently without accurately representing the size of your breast.
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But seriously, we take these tiny pieces of information and create entire stories
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around them, and that's not fair either, because we're comparing our whole life
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with someone else's single moment.
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Or worse, we're trying to reconstruct
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their whole life from the handful of moments they chose to share.
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That's never been a fair comparison, not for them and certainly not for us.
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One of the people in my life who taught me a little something about this probably
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doesn't even realize she has. My sister Ashley.
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Long before her story ever made national news, before investigators,
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before press conferences, before any of that,
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Ashley had quietly made a decision. She decided to leave social media,
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not because someone told her to, or because she thought it was evil,
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or because she was trying to prove a point.
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She simply came to the conclusion that in that season of her life,
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it wasn't serving her, wasn't making her more peaceful or joyful,
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and it wasn't helping her become the woman she wanted to be. So she stepped away.
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And I remember thinking, good for her.
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She knew herself well enough to recognize what she needed.
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Then, everything changed. As most of you know, last December,
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she was the victim of an acid attack, and almost overnight, her story spread across the country.
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And suddenly, the very platform she had intentionally walked away from became
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one of our greatest resources.
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Ashley gave our family permission to share her story because we needed help.
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We needed people to know what had happened.
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We needed tips for investigators. We needed prayers.
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And honestly, we needed people to simply care.
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And I have to tell you, social media showed up in an extraordinary way.
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Thousands of people prayed.
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People shared her story. Tips came in. People donated. Complete strangers reached
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out with encouragement.
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People we had never met stood beside our family.
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I'll never forget that.
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It reminded me that technology itself isn't good or evil.
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It's a tool. And in the hands of compassionate people, it became an incredible source of hope.
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But there was another side, the dark side, one I wasn't prepared for.
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If you've never walked through a public tragedy, I hope you never have to experience this part.
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Because there is an underbelly to social media. There are people who create
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lies because lies get attention.
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People who invent conspiracy theories because outrage gets clicks.
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People who somehow forgot or forget there are real human beings on the other side of the screen.
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Have you ever heard the saying, people are desperate for attention,
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they don't really care whether it's positive or negative, they'll take whatever they can get?
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I thought about that almost every day, because while our family was trying to
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survive, they were complete strangers, making up stories they had never taken the time to verify.
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And here's what broke my heart.
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When someone has already been victimized, every lie, every cruel comment,
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every conspiracy can become another small wound.
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It can force a person and a family to relive the trauma over and over again.
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And I remember thinking, there has to be a better way.
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I hope someday we find a way to create greater accountability online,
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because freedom of speech matters, but so does responsibility.
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Real people live behind these stories. Real families, real children, real grief.
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Sometimes we've become so comfortable commenting on content that we forget we're
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commenting on someone's life.
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Walking through all of that changed me, not because it made me afraid of social
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media, but quite the opposite.
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It made me realize the question has never really been, should I be on social media?
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I don't think that's the right question. The question I've started asking myself
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is, what is social media bringing out in me?
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Because that's a question only I can answer. Maybe in one season it's inspiring
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me. Maybe in another it's distracting.
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Maybe in one season I need to clean up who I'm following. And maybe in another
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I need to step away altogether.
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Neither choice makes me stronger or weaker. It simply means I'm paying attention.
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I've realized that discernment isn't just learning to recognize what's wrong.
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It's learning to recognize what isn't right for me in this season.
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And I think that's maturity.
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Not pretending something doesn't affect me or pushing through because everyone
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else seems to be doing fine.
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Not comparing my journey to someone else's. Just being honest enough to say,
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this isn't helping me become the person God is calling me to be right now.
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And there's tremendous freedom in that.
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The truth is, this entire experience forced me to stop looking at social media
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and start looking at myself.
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Because at the end of the day, that's where the work has always been.
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I still use social media, and now I'm much more deliberate about who I follow,
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what I consume, and what I allow to take up space in my mind.
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I've watched close friends quietly spiral into comparison, and while I've never
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thought of myself as someone who sits there consciously comparing my life to
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someone else's, I've also learned that comparison doesn't always announce itself.
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Sometimes it slips in quietly. You can be perfectly content and then spend 20
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minutes scrolling and suddenly feel like you're behind.
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Like you should be doing more, looking different, living differently,
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wanting something you didn't even want before you picked up your phone.
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I'm much more mindful of that now. I've seen it show up in my own family, too.
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I've watched my adult sons get pulled into cycles of what looked like news but
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was often really commentary, opinion, and more of the same content being fed
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back to them because an algorithm had learned exactly what would keep them watching.
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And these were young men with strong convictions and opinions of their own.
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But even then, I found myself reminding them, your algorithm is feeding you
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what you keep feeding it.
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Sometimes you have to deliberately change what you're clicking on.
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Look at a different perspective, read something outside the feed,
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question what you're being shown.
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Because if we aren't careful, we can mistake repetition for truth.
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And I think that may be one of the biggest lessons for me in all of this.
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Knowledge really is power, not knowledge that makes us fearful of technology,
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knowledge that helps us use it wisely,
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understanding how these platforms work understanding ourselves well enough to
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recognize when something is affecting us,
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and then having the discernment to do something with what we know,
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because i don't think the answer is fear i don't think the answer is pretending
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we're unaffected i think the answer is awareness discernment,
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and paying attention to the system yes but maybe even more importantly to ourselves.
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Before we go, I've been thinking about something all week.
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As I was writing this episode, I kept asking myself, what has social media actually taught me?
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And the answer surprised me. It hasn't just taught me about technology. It's taught me about me.
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It's shown me where I compare. It's shown me where I seek approval,
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what inspires me, and what quietly steals my peace.
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It's shown me the voices I need more of and the voices I probably need less
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of. And honestly, I'm grateful for that.
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Because awareness isn't something to be ashamed of. Awareness is gift.
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How many times have we prayed, Lord, show me what you want me to work on,
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and then we're surprised when he does.
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Sometimes he reveals it through relationships, sometimes through disappointment,
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sometimes through success, and sometimes through something as ordinary as a phone in our hand.
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I've learned that God can use almost anything to teach us if we're paying attention.
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One of the things I've become more intentional about is asking myself better questions.
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Not, how many people like this, or why does her life seem easier than mine,
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or why am I not where they are?
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Instead, I try to ask, what is this bringing out in me?
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Because that's a question worth answering. If something consistently brings
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out gratitude, keep leaning into it.
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If it consistently brings out generosity, keep on going.
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If it encourages you, inspires you, teaches you, helps you grow, what a gift.
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But if it consistently brings out comparison, envy, anger, fear,
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discontentment, or pulls your attention away from the life God has actually
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placed in front of you, that's worth paying attention to.
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Two, not because you should feel guilty, but because you've learned something about yourself.
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And once you know, you can make a different choice. Maybe that choice is cleaning
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up who you follow or setting boundaries. Maybe it's taking a break.
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Maybe it's deleting the app for a season.
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Or maybe nothing needs to change at all. Maybe you've built a really healthy relationship with it.
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I don't think there's one answer that fits everyone. I really don't.
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What I've learned is that discernment rarely gives us the same answer for every person.
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It asks each of us to honestly examine our own hearts.
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Maybe that's what growing up in our faith looks like. Not copying someone else's
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convictions, but allowing God to shape our own.
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You know, I started this episode thinking we were going to talk about social
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media, but I don't think that's what we've talked about at all.
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I think we've talked about authenticity, about identity, about paying attention
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to the quiet places in our hearts that are still becoming,
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because that's true whether we're talking about social media,
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relationships, our careers, or anything else.
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Life has a funny way of revealing us to ourselves. The question is, are we willing to look?
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There's one sentence I hope you'll remember after today's conversation,
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not because I wrote it, but because I think it's true.
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The opposite of authenticity isn't imperfection. It's performance.
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And maybe the invitation today isn't to perform a little better.
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Maybe it's to perform a little less.
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To stop trying so hard to look like we have it all together and instead become
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people who are simply honest.
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Honest with ourselves, honest with God, honest with the people we've been entrusted to love.
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Because I've found that God does some of His best work, not in the parts of
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our lives we've polished, but in the parts we're finally willing to place in His hands.
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Thank you for spending this time with me today. If this conversation encouraged
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you or maybe made you think about something a little differently,
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I'd love for you to share it with someone who might need it too.
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And until next time, if you're breaking, keep believing and becoming while that's already happening.