It's about audio, but have you been listening to yourself?

My articles are always about audio, content, technology, innovation, multimedia formats... that's what I love to write and talk about, and my career has been centered around these topics.

But in this article – perhaps due to the reflective atmosphere that always emerges at the end of each year – I don't want to talk about business models, formats, or any other professional matters... I do want to talk about audio, but about listening, about LISTENING to oneself.

Do you also feel that these pauses for self-listening have become rarer? Our lives are so hectic, so filled with tasks that there's either very little time left – or perhaps we've misplaced our priorities – to pause and listen to ourselves.

Yet, since this space is about audio, about listening to content, it might be a good idea to discuss the necessary pause to look within and listen to ourselves.

So first things first... let's take a few seconds right now and just listen to ourselves! 1, 2, 3, go!

It's difficult, isn't it? A flood of things comes to mind: tasks, bills, commitments... if it's not something from within, there's music playing or a podcast. The point is that we've lost – or are losing – the ability to, as I heard in a training session here at Skeelo the other day, the ability to take breaks and manage micro-idleness. Every pause is quickly filled with something... most often, our cell phones.

But we need – it's a daily effort – to pause and listen to ourselves. To understand if we're letting our hearts speak, or if we're just jumping from one task to another, almost as if we were machines. But, as my therapist says, the fact is that we are organisms... and like any organism, we need alternation, oscillation, and pauses. Only through this can we understand if we're on the right path, if we need to make adjustments, and then move forward... strong, steady, and happy.

It's not always easy, of course. Everyone has their own journey and challenges. But it's very important to pause, even if it's just for 2 minutes, once a day... to hear nothing other than yourself.

I've been monitoring myself closely, alternating between moments of focus and execution and moments of pause, to analyze, reflect, and then breathe and return to executing. This oscillation is a wonderful – though not the only – remedy to avoid a collision course with exhaustion and burnout.

So, this text – the last of the year before a necessary break to recharge ideas and return in 2023 to talk about business, models, news, innovations, and everything else I usually discuss here – is an invitation to listen... not to an audiobook, a podcast, or an audio drama... but to your heart. Because it always has the best story for what matters most to you at the end of the day: your life and what you make of it :)