What Do You Mute About Yourself?

A few years ago, at a work conference, a presenter asked us to break into small groups. Once we settled in, she paused and asked a question that has stayed with me ever since:

What do you mute about yourself to make others feel comfortable?

It is one of those questions that settles in quickly because it names something so many of us do without even realizing it.

In fact, it stayed with me enough that I later asked my ACCIS Board to answer that same question at a winter leadership meeting. And it has stayed with me deeply enough that I now include it in my “15 Get to Know You” questions when I sit down with juniors and seniors to begin brainstorming college essays.

Because muting yourself does not always look obvious. Sometimes it looks like being mature, polite, professional, easygoing, or low-maintenance. Sometimes it even gets rewarded.

But often, it starts when certain parts of us get labeled as too much…TOO opinionated. TOO emotional. TOO ambitious. TOO direct. TOO creative. TOO excited. TOO different. So we adjust. We soften the edges. We shrink the story. We edit ourselves in real time. At first, that can feel like it is working. There is less friction. Less discomfort. More approval. More belonging.

But the cost is real.

When you mute yourself long enough, you can start to forget what your full voice sounds like. You can start building a life around being liked instead of being known. Around being palatable instead of being real. And for students, this shows up constantly in the college process.

It shows up most clearly in essays. So many students think they need to sound impressive, polished, agreeable, and perfectly put together. They start removing the very things that make their writing feel alive: the sharp observation, the honest emotion, the quirky detail, the real perspective.

They sand away the spark.

But the essays that stay with a reader are rarely the ones that feel the most managed. They are the ones with a pulse. The ones where a student stops performing and starts telling the truth. That does not mean students need to overshare or be dramatic to stand out. It simply means that the strongest essays usually come from honesty, not performance. From specificity, not perfection.

That is why this question matters so much…What DO you mute about yourself to make others feel comfortable? It is a powerful question for adults. It is an even more important one for teenagers, who are constantly absorbing messages about what makes them acceptable, impressive, or easy to like.

But the goal of the college essay process is not to make students sound more polished than they really are. It is to help them understand themselves well enough to write with clarity, confidence, and truth.

So ask the question…Ask it at the dinner table…Ask it in the car…Ask it during essay brainstorming…Ask it of yourself, too. And what might change if that part of you got to speak just a little louder?

At Decision Drop, we believe some of the most meaningful work in the college process is helping students recognize that the parts of themselves they have learned to downplay are often the very parts that make their stories matter. The goal is not to smooth those parts away. It is to help students understand them, trust them, and communicate them honestly.

Because the best essays are not the ones that sound the most impressive.

They are the ones that sound true.