Elections are important.
Protecting, preserving, and ensuring that all people have the right to vote is important.
Ultimately the test of the system’s strength is not in who wins, but in ensuring that everyone gets a chance to vote without undue encumbrances — to be heard, to feel expressed.
As much as anything else, elections reflect the values of a country. Not just in who wins, but in how campaigns are run and how elections are handled. The nature of the ads, the tenor of the discourse, the media coverage, how voters are treated at the polls — all of these things reflect our values and speak to who we are as a nation, and where we are going.
At most we get amped up about elections once a year. Sometimes not even that often. Usually it’s every 2 years: the presidential election and mid-terms.
It’s important to remember that we vote every day.
Our Daily Votes
Every day we vote on what to buy and from whom to buy it, what to learn and from whom we learn it, what to read, where to source our information, who to hire, who to collaborate with, where to travel, what to watch, what to listen to.
Every day we vote on what we will tolerate, in the way we are spoken to and treated, in actions and behaviors we witness around us, in how we see others being treated.
Every day we vote for the quality of news, information, and work we are willing to accept, about the level of privacy intrusion we deem to be OK, about what we are willing to allow to interrupt our focus and drain our energy.
We make decisions as individuals, as heads of companies, families, and teams. We make decisions as a culture and as a society.
Every decision — every vote — is a statement about what we value. Every value is reflected in our decisions about what we reward, spotlight, and honor.
What gets rewarded gets reinforced. And what gets reinforced strengthens. Rises.
Big Decisions Reflect Little Decisions
The micro-decisions we make daily have a far greater influence on our quality of life than who occupies the White House.
And these decisions, on some level, also determine our options for who to elect to occupy the White House.
Everything is connected.
In the 20 years that I’ve been helping clients navigate their biggest, most high-stakes decisions, I’ve seen repeatedly that the options available to us in our biggest decisions rest on the shoulders of our smallest decisions — the daily decisions that we often don’t think about.
Over the last decade as I started to unpack my own daily decisions and actions, I witnessed how shifting just one decision in my day created a ripple effect that led to bigger changes.
Creating Better Options
I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t thrilled with the options on the ballot this year. Choosing between two white septuagenarian men is not my idea of progress.
I revisited what I wrote four years ago on Election Day. It still resonates. I grieve for what we could have been and pray for what we can become. We can do so much better.
What would happen if we put as much attention and focus on our daily decisions as we did on our Election Day decisions?
We might find ourselves with better options the next time around.
Join me today for conscious counter programming to the doomscrolling of social media. Details here.
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