What is a Good Life? #156
Learning to Trust My Own Voice with Alejandra Guzmán González
Hello and welcome to What Is a Good Life?
A project that isn’t about fixing you — it’s about noticing and living life more fully.
This week, the newsletter has a new order: reflections first, then a couple of questions, a short clip from the conversation, and finally the full episode if you want to dive deeper.
I’ve been reflecting on my conversation with Alejandra Guzmán González, a Nicaraguan educator, lifelong learner, and mother of two. Alejandra’s journey is about learning to trust her own voice. There is much to take from it.
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Take care, Mark
1. My Weekly Reflection
After doing 300+ of these interviews, there is always a moment that gets me emotionally.
Alejandra was navigating a difficult family situation with legal implications. Big decisions needed to be made. She was still in that ocean of “I don’t know what to do” — the lawyers would tell her, her dad would guide her, she’d follow what they said.
But there was one day when she called her father and said, “I don’t want to do that. I really want to do this.”
He started screaming. He was very upset. That was his way — he’d scream for a second or two, then explain why her choice wasn’t advisable.
“Okay,” she thought, “I’m listening to him, but I’m not going to change my mind. I’ll stick to this because I feel I have to do this.”
She was so scared. He was her idol, her protector.
They stayed quiet for a moment on the phone.
“And then he calmed down, with the softest voice that he would easily have too, because he is very sweet also. He told me, ‘You know what, love? Do whatever you want to do and I’ll be there for you.’”
She was almost 40 years old, with two children, legal issues, working to support her family — and still being the child internally who feared her parents because they were the top voices in her head instead of her own voice.
The world is very loud right now.
Opinions and content proliferate ad nauseam. Alejandra describes her journey to trusting her own voice as a period of cocooning — retreating, creating boundaries, cultivating silence.
It reminded me of when I took a sabbatical to Peru, and when people asked me why I was going, they seemed a bit confused by my response: “to hear whatever is going to come next.”
I felt a bit crazy or self-conscious for saying it, but it was true.
With more time and space, Alejandra made a profound realisation.
“What lowered my anxiety about getting the right answers or finding the right guidance,” she said, “was understanding two things. First, that I have the right to listen to myself. And second, that if I make a mistake by following my voice, I can learn from it — and that’s okay.
My intention is never to hurt anybody with the decisions I make. I know that about myself. I can trust that. If something does go wrong, I’ll pay attention and show up.”
There comes a point in all our seeking and figuring out that I’ve seen so many times in these interviews — accompanied almost with a laugh and an exhale: “Ha! I am trying so hard, yet this doesn’t make it easy.”
A psychotherapist friend of mine suggested to me shortly after my child was born: whatever any experts say, whatever it says in the books, nobody spends as much time with — or knows — your child better than you.
Surely we can extend that notion to ourselves.
Nobody knows what it feels like in your mind and body right now. You could shadow me for a year and hear all my thoughts, and you still wouldn’t know.
The particular mix of tension, pain, fears, joys, the excitement of it all.
Also, nobody really knows how it is going to play out in the long run.
I always laugh at the thought of a receipt I received from a travel agent in Delhi, who used my own ignorance against me and ripped me off. I was furious when I noticed.
Only to find that same receipt a year later, when rummaging through old notepads, and realising he set me on a course to meet my wife. That receipt is ten years old this week.
Life seems to be continually inviting me into a conversation. To notice. To listen. To fully inhabit this existence.
I’ve begun to realise it doesn’t want an answer.
My response is enough.
2. This Week’s Questions
Is there a moment when you have felt most content listening to your own voice?
Is there a moment when you listened to your own voice that you now regret?
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3. Weekly Clip From The Podcast
4. Full Episode - Learning To Trust My Own Voice with Alejandra Guzmán González - What is a Good Life? #156
Listen to the full conversation with Alejandra Guzmán González below.
About Me
I am a coach, facilitator, and podcast host, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 300 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.
If you’re interested in exploring your own good life through one-on-one coaching contact me via email.