Monica Wisdom engages listeners in a thought-provoking discussion that transcends individual experiences to explore the interconnectedness of our lives within our communities. In this episode, she introduces the theme of 'voting your vision,' encouraging her audience to think beyond personal interests and consider how their choices impact the broader ecosystem in which they live. By fostering deeper connections and understanding among Black women, Monica sets the tone for a season that prioritizes meaningful dialogue and shared experiences.

Throughout the episode, Monica examines the complexities of being a 'one-issue voter,' urging her audience to recognize the multifaceted nature of their lives. She likens our existence to an ecosystem, where various roles and relationships influence each other. By focusing on the intricate web of connections that define our communities, Monica invites listeners to reflect on their responsibilities and the implications of their choices. She emphasizes that understanding the needs of those around us—from family members to community leaders—is essential for creating a thriving environment for everyone.

As she navigates through pressing global issues such as economic challenges and social justice movements, Monica encourages her audience to engage with these topics thoughtfully. She emphasizes that voting is not just a privilege but a critical aspect of shaping a future that reflects our collective vision. The episode concludes with a poignant reminder: our visions must align with the needs of our communities, fostering a sense of unity and purpose that empowers everyone to thrive.

Takeaways:

• The focus of season four is on building a deeper connection between Monica and her audience, fostering meaningful conversations.
• Monica emphasizes the importance of understanding our ecosystem and how our choices impact those around us.
• Voting is not just a personal right; it is a privilege that has historically been hard-won.
• To effectively vote your vision, consider not just your needs but also those of your community.
• Monica discusses the necessity of having a long-term vision for your life and the lives of those in your ecosystem.
• The conversation around immigration should encompass all individuals, not just those from marginalized backgrounds.

Links referenced in this episode:

• blackwomenamplified.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• audible
• Apple
• Spotify

Hey, black women, amplified family, it's your girl, Monica wisdom.

I hope that you are doing well.

I know, I know, I know.

There was supposed to be an interview coming out this week, but next week it'll happen.

We've had.

I've had some glitches in the background, but they are all taken care of.

And so we're back on our flow.

But like I also said, for this season, season four, we're gonna have more conversations with just me and you.

We've got plenty of interviews for you to explore, and I've got some coming up, but I feel like it's time for us to get to know each other better.

So that's the focus of season four, me and you getting to know each other better and having conversations that directly impact us, like.

Like this political season.

So before we get into this conversation, no, it's not going to be a political conversation, but it's important that you listen to the end.

Make sure you check out blackwomenamplified.com to read the blog post that I put up this week, as well as check out all the happenings with blackwomenamplified.com, all the expansion that we've done offering.

I can't wait.

I'm creating right now a podcasting course for people who want to get into podcasting.

I've been working on it for a while, but now I finally have refined it to the places I want to talk about because there's plenty of podcasting ways to learn how to podcast.

But this one is specific to people who want to leverage their expertise.

Because, you know, I've been an entrepreneur for 35 years, and one thing that is very important when you do a business is for people to know who you are, your values, your perspective, and your point of view in life.

Because with AI and everything happening, people are not trusting social media like they used to.

They're definitely not trusting the media like they used to.

But what is being trusted is, and the new influencers are people that are trusted.

And how people get to trust you is they get to know you.

And one of the best ways for people to get to know you in this landscape, on a more personal level, outside of social media, is podcasting.

So it's very beneficial in many different ways.

In fact, I am mentoring two people in Mexico City right now.

I've been doing it for about three months.

I've got one more month left.

And they work for one of the largest podcasting companies in Mexico, Mexico City, I should say.

And they're doing storytelling like telling, like documentary type storytelling with podcasting.

So I think that's great.

There's so many avenues you can cover.

I mean, audible is one of the biggest companies out there doing only audio, you know, not video.

So Apple podcasts Spotify all audio.

And so there's a lot of opportunity and there's a lot of celebrities getting to podcasting.

I started listening to the podcast with Sterling K.

Brown and his wife Ryan.

They do a funny, funny podcast.

Sherri shepherd, how she got her television show was through her podcast.

She's been an actor for 20 plus years and had been trying to get a television show for 18 years and a year and a half into her podcast with Kim Whitley.

She's got her own talk show because it garnered visibility for her and it allowed people to know her instead of just the characters she portrays in television and movies.

So anyway, that's a whole nother issue.

I mean, not issue, but a whole other thing.

And we'll talk about that later.

But if you go to the website and get on the email list when it is ready to, there's a lot of moving pieces, and I'm doing it all myself.

So there's lots of moving pieces that I'm putting together and, yeah, so, you know, you'll be the first to know about it.

If you're on my email list, of course I'll talk about it on social media and all the different places, but you all will be the first to hear about it.

But let's talk about this election, and I'm entitling this episode.

Vote your vision.

Now, what do I mean by vote your vision?

I hear a lot of people talk about, well, I'm just a one issue voter.

I don't understand what that means because it seems like if you're just focused on one issue, you're negating everything else that you need, right.

You're not even paying attention to everything else that you need.

So, for instance, if my only issue is the economy, I'm only paying attention to what I see.

And if I don't understand how economics work, I would think the economy and price gouging were the same thing.

They are not.

I would think that tariffs would benefit, benefit the economy.

It does not.

And so because I'm a complicated person and I have lots of moving parts to my life, as all people do, nobody is just a singular person, an amoeba.

Nobody's just an amoeba.

We have cells and we have, you know, blood cells.

We have all brain cells.

We have fat on our body.

We have muscles, we have bones, we have cartilage.

You know, we have all types of things happening within us, within our biology, all at the same time and the same thing about our lives.

We have many different roles in life.

We are mom, we are auntie, we are cousin, we are niece, we are daughter, we are father, we are uncle, we are cousin.

You know, we are boss, we are employee, we are entrepreneur, we are student.

So there's many different roles we play and all of those things are happening simultaneously.

So instead of it just being an amoeba, it's an ecosystem.

Ecosystem.

That's a whole nother conversation, but it's an ecosystem.

So when I say vote your vision, ask yourself, what is in my ecosystem and what does my ecosystem need?

Right?

So because we live in an ecosystem, we all have our own world that we have created and co curated with God.

And it is amazing because there's so much going on at the same time, you know?

And when I hear people talk about, I'm stressed out, I'm burned out, I'm overwhelmed, that's why.

Because everything is moving in so many different directions.

You have to kind of pull it all in, figure out what's important, what you need to work on, and what you need to let go of.

And that's when I teach my visioning process, the MVP process.

That's what I talk about.

What, what is everything going on?

Let's look at all of that and then let's break it down into what is good, what needs to be worked on, and what I need to let go of.

And that's the foundation of my visioning process.

So let's look at what's going on in the world.

We've got wars in the Middle east.

We've got Sudan.

Sudan, we've got Ukraine.

We've got all of that going on across the world.

We've got global inflation.

Not just in the United States of America, but we have global inflation.

We have regimes.

Paris and England, France and England were going through the same thing we were going through.

So this fascism movement is global.

It's not just the United States, but within one week, the people stood up and said no.

And then everybody, the fascist regimes were slated to win, and the people said no.

And within seven days, everything flipped around.

And France and France and England remained democracies.

Right?

And we have to understand, there's the immigration conversation happening.

But I find it really interesting that the immigration conversation is only about black and brown people.

When immigrants are anybody who's not from this country, that includes Sweden, Canada.

What else is out there?

All the countries.

All the countries.

Everyone but ours.

South America.

You know, Norway, England, France, Belgium.

All the countries that are not ours.

If you are not from this country and you're here to work or you've moved here and you're living here, you are indeed an immigrant of this.

Of this era.

Right.

But people don't see it that way.

For some reason.

It's stuck on black and brown people.

That bothers me a lot.

And the way that people.

And here's the thing.

The conversation has shifted from immigrants to migrants.

Like, when you talk about the issue happening in Haiti, migrants, a lot of people don't know this is what happens to.

But because I get a lot of intel, what happens is companies find our cities, find that they're okay.

Let's use the city.

Because what happened in Springfield, Springfield, this particular city, people were leaving the city.

The city was essentially dying, right?

So much so that the companies in the city did not want to leave, because that's what happens when a city packs up and leaves.

They don't have the workforce they need in the city that they're in, or it's too expensive to work there.

So what happens is these companies will go to other countries, create an agreement that a certain amount of people will be able to come to a particular city and work in this industry, as well as the support that needs to support that industry.

And that way, it.

These jobs are filled.

Right?

And they are migrant workers.

So they get a.

They have.

They're legally living in America to work.

That's the break.

That's an oversimplified version of what it is, but that's essentially what happens.

So when you're talking about the people in Haiti, they are migrant workers.

They came to United States to do a certain level of work.

It happens all around.

I remember the first time I saw it was there was a nursing shortage in America, and the kids, millennials, were not going into nursing, so it leaves a void.

So they went to the Philippines.

The Philippines trains these people to become nurses.

And suddenly you saw a huge amount of filipino women who were nurses.

So they brought them here as migrant workers to fill the needs of hospitals and doctors offices and XYZ, you know, all the places.

So that's how that works.

And it happens in many different industries.

It happens in engineering.

It happens in tech.

They will go to certain countries, because certain countries have, you know, their thing, their niche, I should say so.

For instance, Manila customer service is their niche.

That's what the country teaches them.

So they get a lot of these customer service jobs.

They were going to countries that can feel that need at a cheaper rate.

And so a lot of these.

What do they call them?

Yeah.

So a lot of these companies, instead of paying somebody what an American would require, they can pay five, six, $7 an hour to get the same work done.

So that's how they save money.

But either they have an office overseas or they bring them over here as migrant workers.

But typically, it's cheaper to just keep people overseas.

So I'm saying all of that to say that there are many things going on at the same time.

And as we decide our election, and I'm pulling out my biggest push yet because I really want people to get out and vote.

That is my most important thing, because that's the one piece that bothers me the most, is when people say, well, I'm just not going to vote.

And all that it took to have, like I said at the beginning, the privilege to vote, and I call it a privilege because it's not fully a right.

They keep making it more difficult and more difficult to vote, and it needs to be put in a position.

It really just needs to be in the constitution that one vote, one person.

That's it.

It doesn't need to be an amendment.

It needs to be written into the constitution because the amendments are getting changed all the time, especially when you have somebody who doesn't want this current constitution.

They want their own.

So anyway, when I say we have to look at our ecosystem and look at our lives, our lives are not just us.

We're not walking through the desert as a nomad with nobody around for hundreds of miles.

You know, we don't have a walking stick with a water pouch on our back and just walking through the desert like Erika Badu in a music video.

We have people in our lives.

We have, some of us have children, some of us have spiritual spouses, some of us have partners.

And then we live in a neighborhood.

So we have neighbors all around us.

Some of us only have neighbors that are just like us.

And some of us have neighbors that are all types of people, all types of religions, all types of ages, all types of belief systems, socioeconomically different.

But some people live in communities that is only just like them.

And so it is easier to stay how you are instead of reaching out because that's where you're comfortable.

But somebody like me, I live around all types of people, and I prefer it that way, you know, I prefer having a diversity of thought, diversity of income, diversity of interest, beliefs, because it helps me to expand and grow.

But that's just a personal choice.

Everybody has their personal choice.

And so when we look at, when I say vote, your vision, it's not just about your vision, it's about your ecosystem, who is in it and how will they thrive under your decision.

Right?

Because this isn't just this one issue thing right now.

It's so much bigger than that from my perspective.

It's way bigger than that of.

And so when I say who is in your ecosystem, who are your neighbors?

What do they need?

Right?

Who are the people who teach your children?

What do they need?

Your pastor, what does he need?

The people in your church or your synagogue or your temple, what do they need?

The people who work at the grocery store where you get your groceries every day, what do they need?

You know, what's important to them.

And here's the thing.

Here's the thought process.

Most of us think people need the same things that we do.

Our people look at life the same way that we do.

Completely different belief systems believe completely different things.

For some people, pro life means you're pro life all the lives, whether it's a soldier or a fetus, whether it's a kid down the street or an elderly person, whether it's a woman trying to give birth, or it's somebody who is ushering into the next phase of existence.

Life from beginning to death.

That's what some people mean when they say pro life.

A lot of people say when they say pro life, they just mean from the time of conception.

But who knows when that is?

Like, I don't know when that is.

Most women don't find out to the second month until they've missed a couple of cycles, a couple of periods.

So everybody has their own perspective and everybody has their own needs.

And so when I think of vote, your vision, your vision includes all of these different people in it.

Because of them, you're able to do what you need to do.

Your mechanic, right, your, the male person, right.

The, all of these different entities that are in our lives, all these different people that are in our lives, all of these different systems that are in our lives.

And we can't just say, well, I'm just going to focus on this.

Okay, so you're going to sit in your house and just focus on the economy.

That don't make no sense, you know, so, and it can't just be, well, as long as I got what I got, then I'm all good.

But when you leave your house, you encounter other people that help you on your journey, right?

Whether you're a college student or you're going to the library, you're going to the grocery store, you're going to the doctor, you're getting on a flight, there are people helping you along the way.

So we have to take off those blinders and really understand that we are not in this.

No matter how lonely you feel, we are not in this world alone.

We are not in this country alone.

We are not in our neighborhood alone.

Now, we might not.

We might choose to not engage with people.

We might have a phobia, so we don't engage with people, but the people are still there.

So matter how hard you try, they're not disappearing.

Like, you can't disappear me, you know, I can't disappear you.

And nor do I want to.

I feel.

I feel you have the right to exist.

You have the right to.

If you're a racist person and you can't stand me because of my complexion, I have the right to exist and feel the way that I do.

And you have the right to exist the way that you do.

I might not like it, and I don't.

And it's scary to me, but I still feel like you have the right to feel like that.

I don't know why you feel like it.

And most times people don't know why they're racist.

They just are.

But I say all that to say that the vision, the vote needs to match the vision.

Not just the vision for yourself in this moment, but your vision for the future.

You know, what if one day you want to open up a business?

What if one day you want to marry somebody who's not your nationality, right?

They just passed in the senate in Nashville.

They're trying to get rid of interracial relationships.

And that keeps coming up around different little areas in the country.

So what if they're able to take it to the Supreme Court of the United States and they're like, oh, well, yeah, so I think that's right.

I think that's a good thing.

So then it becomes law of the land.

Interracial relationships are not illegal.

So that will make your marriage null and void.

So everything that you have built with somebody because of their complexion is now null and void.

Same thing with same sex marriage.

And my thought is always, when they start with one, they have a game plan for more because they are not single issue people.

They have a chessboard and a 50 to 100 year game plan.

All ready to go.

And they just pass it on to the next person.

The next person and the next person.

We need the same thing for our lives.

What is the game plan for our lives?

What is the future?

No matter how old you are, if you're in your seventies, what is your next 20 years gonna look like?

If you're ten, what are your next 20 years gonna look like?

What do you want your 30 to look like?

And I've done vision boarding every year the last couple years.

I didn't.

And I tell you what, there's been a big difference in my life.

It's very important that we have a vision for our life.

We focus with intention and move forward to that vision.

So what is your vision for your life?

And remember, your vision is not just about you.

I remember I was talking to someone years ago, and she was.

She asked me to advise her on some stuff she was going through, and at this time, she was a CFO for a company, and she wasn't happy anymore.

And she didn't know they had.

They laid her off, or they were about to lay her off, and she didn't know what to do.

So we went to lunch and then sat down, and I said, well, okay.

I said, we'll start your own company.

You have all the connections.

You know what to do.

Start your own company.

She was terrified.

She was terrified to start her own business.

And so I said, well, let's look at this.

Let's shift how you're looking at this.

Let's talk about, what do you, where do you want to be in life in ten years, and what's the best way to get there?

Where are you now and what do you need to let go of?

What is working?

Like I said before, what is working, what do you need to work on, and what do you need to let go of?

So we went through that whole process, and so I took her through my MVP process, and she ended up starting her own company.

And that was about 15 years ago, and she just sold her company for a huge amount of money that if she had not said yes to her vision, she would be working at somebody else's job.

And I'm not saying that anything is wrong with that, but my point is, is that she had to look at her life from the perspective of not just herself, but her ecosystem.

What did she want for her children?

What did she want for her marriage?

What does she want for her lifestyle?

What did she want to be able to do?

What would her company look like?

What would that ecosystem look like?

What would the people that she hired be like.

And so one thing that she initiated for her company was my dream board.

And she put it in her office and told everybody to add to the dream board because she wanted to make sure that with her company, everybody's dreams came true.

And they did.

So I say all that to say, and I'm complete with this conversation, but vote your vision.

But first of all, think about your vision.

Think about the vision for the people in your ecosystem.

Think about their future and not just your own.

Think about your family, whether you like them or not.

Think about your friends.

You know, what does that look like, your hairstylist and the people in there, what do they need?

And will your vision help them or harm them?

Be clear about that question.

Will your vision help them or harm them?

And so I say to you, my sisters and the men that love us, vote your vision and pay attention to the people that are around you.

Because if we continue to live in a way that is only just about us, what's going to happen is it's just only going to be us.

And life will be nothing but gray areas.

So this is your girl, Monica wisdom.

Next week, we will be back with our interview with an amazing person.

I pray that all things align for this to be released.

And if you had an opportunity, make sure you go hear my interview with the Shaping Freedom podcast and you will get to hear more about me and my story and my ecosystem and why I'm the way that I am.

Child, you really want to know that?

Anyway, have an amazing day and really honor and respect, like really, really sit and think about all that it took for your ability to not just vote, but to make a choice to vote.

And my prayer is that you choose to vote and that you choose to vote so that everybody in your ecosystem lives a life that they can thrive in, not from the way you think they should live, but the way that they choose to live for themselves.

Have an amazing evening and I will be back soon.

This is Monica Wisdom, the host and producer of the Black Women amplified podcast.

Shout out to Sam, our editor.

Shout out to Oshun Laday, our musical person producer who produced the theme music, and all of our amazing guests on our show that said yes.

I appreciate every woman and the one man who said yes to the Black Women Amplified podcast.

Have an amazing day.

And if you have an opportunity, please go to Apple Podcast and give us a review because it helps get the word out.

And it's really important that we get the word out so we can continue.

The Black Women Amplified podcast.

Be blessed and know that you were loved.