Why There is a Cost to Curating Your Life

I'm curious if someone from a hundred years ago could see into the world we have created through social media and wonder what was holding us together.

In addition to the crazy, I also see a myriad of curated images depicting beauty and perfection – bodies, homes, families, vacations – showing us what is unattainable, what we can only aspire to on our best days (if at all) and leaves us feeling like we are missing something in our own lives.

And so in response, we start curating our own lives to become part of a world that may not be real. We publish what people want to see because we think the way it actually is isn't enough.

If we weren't living in fear of other people's opinions of us, no one would have the power to take anything away.

We are so eager to share our opinions and publish our lives with strangers, that we put out there what we have failed to reflect on ourselves.

Maybe we are not taking the time at the front end to really consider what we are learning, how we are growing, whose voice we need to hear most in our life and whose opinion matters most.

What is it costing you to constantly be curating your life for a world that may not even be interested in it? Over time you may have begun to believe other people’s reactions before you have stopped to consider the impact of your own.

There is a cost to curating your life.

We are placing so much pressure on ourselves, on leaders, on people we look up to, to show up digitally in a world that loves you one day and hates you the next. I know I feel this pressure every day. To say something. To be someone. 

The unexamined private life is not worth living.
The curated public life isn't either.

Find your voice. Speak your truth. Change the world. And do not be held in the power of others' opinions of you.

You have an audience of One. He created you to carry the message He has seeded in you. Steward it well. Develop it well. And when it's time, your voice will carry revelation that has the power to transform, rather than conform to, a waiting world.