{"id":4691,"date":"2026-09-06T12:31:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T12:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alchemyfor.life\/balancecoaching\/?p=4691"},"modified":"2026-09-06T12:31:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T12:31:20","slug":"trapping-a-moment-in-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alchemyfor.life\/balancecoaching\/2026\/09\/06\/trapping-a-moment-in-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Trapping a Moment in Time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Trapping a moment of reality in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, hey there. Welcome back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As someone who’s recorded over 300 of these episodes, I’ve become aware of something. And it might surprise you to know that I’ve listened to these, each one of them, probably at least twice. And no, it’s not because of some narcissistic need to hear my own lovely voice\u2014why, thank you for saying that!<\/em><\/strong> It’s because I… I listen for errors, I listen for sound levels and things, and I listen for one other thing. And that’s the thing I’d like to talk about today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trapping Moments of Reality in (Digital) Communication<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Like these short episodes, every time you send a text message or an email, you’re essentially trapping a moment of reality in time. You are suggesting or saying or conveying something that reflects who you are at that very moment. And the minutiae of that moment is magnified by the fact that everything is so fast and so instant. You can have a thought and then send off a text message in literally a second or two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I’m sure you’ve read things about, you know, don’t send when you’re angry, reread something you’ve sent, if you have heightened emotions perhaps you should write it and then send it later, and so forth. And those are all related to the thing I’m conveying right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ink to Instant Messages<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the olden days, and I mean the olden<\/em> olden days, people would write on a piece of paper, and it would take some time to get to the subject. And by subject, I mean the recipient. Writing something in ink meant you were going to be really careful about it. In fact, you might say it out loud a few times before you put your pen to paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’ve read Three Voices<\/a><\/em>, it means you’re using your third voice, the one I’m using right now, to say things out loud so that your second voice isn’t talking directly to the paper. And that’s an interesting concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three Voices Concept and Unfiltered Social Media<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So let me branch off here for a second. So, in my book Three Voices<\/a><\/em>, I say your first voice is your gut reaction, your knee-jerk reaction, your internal yes\/no. It’s the part of you that always tries to answer correctly, and a lot of times we don’t listen to it. And I use the example of: “Should I have this cake?” Well, and your first voice is, “No, no.” And then you say, “But I’ve been good! It’s been a long time since I’ve had cake, even though I shouldn’t have it right now.” So, we tend to overrule our first voice sometimes, and that’s when we run into some problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second voice is the most complicated. It’s our inner monologue, but it’s also our inner dialogue. It’s the voices in our head. It’s the fight we had with our spouse. It’s the argument with a client. It’s an interaction with someone that was really distasteful that we play back over and over and over again in the shower. It’s the voice of a parent saying something that a parent should never say. It’s those kind of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when you let those voices speak directly to a piece of paper, it’s bad<\/span>. It’s far, far worse when that voice communicates directly to an electronic medium. Ladies and gentlemen, I reveal to you: social media. Specifically, Twitter, things like that. When you’re sitting in front of a keyboard and you read something that immediately creates an emotional reaction out of you, and your second voice is in full effect, and it communicates directly with the keyboard, which communicates directly with the upstream reality of millions of people, you can see how that’s a bad thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Timeless Content vs. Reacting to the Moment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So putting all the negatives and warnings aside, let’s get back to the third reason of why I listen to my podcast. And that’s because I want to make sure the thing that I’m conveying is something that is beyond the moment. It’s not something that I say, “Hey, I was at the store today and someone stepped on my foot and here’s how I feel about that,” which is 80% of LinkedIn posts, sorry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want it to be something useful. I want it to be something you can listen to a few years later. And to my positive surprise, I have found that pretty much for the most part, the things that I’ve recorded are things that I can actually recommend to people that are 5 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why Every Text Message is a Historical Snapshot of Who You Are<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Can you say that for texts that you’ve sent? Can you say that for emails that you’ve sent? Can you say that for policies and decisions that you’ve sent? Well, you know, we are evolving people. We are people who do change, and hopefully we change our opinions based on new and exciting facts. I’d like to think that we don’t change our core beliefs, because those should be core. That… that’s our first voice. That’s our instinct, our morals, our ethics, things like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when we gather more data, we should be able to sort of alter our perspective on things. And in those cases, you may have text messages that don’t exactly reflect who you are. But my fascination in this particular episode is with the fact that regardless of what you’re saying, regardless of what you’re thinking, regardless of how much you’re micromanaging your emotions, every single time you hit send, it’s done. It’s gone. It’s trapped in time. You’ve trapped a snapshot of who you are in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that in and of itself is really fascinating, isn’t it? I mean, what other… what other way can we do that? Obviously, if you take video and whatever form of media you’re taking, you’re still trapping yourself in time\u2014or at least who you were at that moment, what you believed at that moment, what you were trying to convey. Man, that’s a lot of weight on your shoulders when you just want to say, “Can you pick up some eggs?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overcommunication, Digital Wisdom, and Evolving Your Message<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So what I’m saying is, I guess we… we have to consider that weight. We have to consider how amazing it is to be able to do that. If you’re someone who struggles with overcommunication\u2014hello!\u2014you struggle with sort of trying to predict what the other person is thinking. You try to predict what other questions they may have. Now, obviously that can work in your favor if you’re someone who, oh, I don’t know, has a podcast or writes books, because that way you get to address a lot of the things that you can’t because you’re not in a dynamic communication with someone. You’re actually in a, “Hey, listen to this,” and you don’t get a say in what I’m saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it also means you add extra information, or you adjust your information because you’re… you can… you can think to yourself, “Oh, wow, I phrased it that way because I didn’t want you to be upset. I phrased it that way because I really wanted to focus on this instead of the other thing, but now that I mentioned that, that’s all you’re focusing on.” And it’s not just for personal communication. Obviously, people who are good at marketing know this all too well. They know what to mention and what not to mention, they know how large a font should be because that’s the important part of it, etc., and so forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When people look back on their communication, sometimes they’re amazed and sometimes they cringe. I mean, think about if you kept a diary or journal when you were younger, and now you read it right now. You may have said that, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m going to be 30 years old sometime, that’s old,” and now you’re… and now you’re twice that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having a historical record like this is really interesting. I mean, granted, if as part of your job, if you look back at your historical record for 5 years, all you see is, “Here are the Ferguson files. Let me know if you have questions.” And it’s just that same email over and over again, not a lot to look at, not a lot to examine historically. But the way that you compose your proposal, the way that you address your clients, the way that you follow up, the documents you include, the wording on the document, those are all things that you probably evolve with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My suggestion to you is first of all, just think about the enormity of what happens when you send a text or an email or something, and you say, “Wow, this is a moment in time I’m trapping.” And then, think about your documentation. And finally, judging yourself based on what you know now is sometimes unfair. If you’ve written something, sent something, believed something, and you look back on yourself and go, “Wow, I was dumb.” No. You just didn’t experience the wisdom you have now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And hopefully, I just added to that wisdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As always, thank you for listening. Take care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you for listening as always. Go to markbradford.org to see all my author-related things. Go to Alchemy for Life to see coaching, speaking, writing, and this podcast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alchemy for Life theme by Mark Bradford and Alchemy for Life. All background music is by Audionautix and Jason Shaw.<\/em><\/p>\n

\nhttps:\/\/alchemyfor.life\/podcasts\/moment.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><\/div>

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Overcommunication, Digital Wisdom, and Evolving Your Message<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4694,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcasts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t