Change is inevitable. Each week I meet individuals passionate about their purpose and desire to be successful in their endeavours. They express something is stopping them from achieving their ambitions and feel a sense of fear and regret.
When I ask the question “What’s stopping you?” there are moments of silence and they’re not sure or can’t pinpoint the issues.
In many, if not most cases, it’s simply the essential tools required for change – a word that creates fear and yet you know is inevitable. So why or who instils this fear and how does it take over or place us in a suspended state of being?
The only way you change is accepting that you need to.
Accepting Change
Accepting change as a natural part of life is the same as growing old. For the first 20 or so years you are trained to listen to voices that are not your own. The echoes of parents, siblings, relatives, teachers, peers and mentors telling you what’s right or wrong. How to make decisions and impregnating their choices and decisions into your thought processes.
Growing up you realise that not every opinion matches your own belief system. You have repressed your own point of view and to a degree your voice is inaudible. All their beliefs, judgements, attitudes and ideas have been planted in your mind whilst your own opinions swim around trying to take pride of place. Is what you believe right or more important than what you’ve been taught or told for the first 20 years of your life?
Remove the Training Wheels
The implanted teachings from your past are similar to training wheels on a bike. Fundamental lay of the land rules to set you up for the rest of your life. You get to choose which of those ideas and thoughts have purpose and connect to your own inner truth. Now you need to raise the voice that has been sitting silent for so long.
Let the inaudible become audible, raise your voice to become distinct and purposeful. Pay attention to it, it’s your intuition – very different from your conscience. Raising the level of your own echo resonates it to the same vibration as your intuition. Allowing you to overcome fears and make better decisions to create your desires in life.
Know Thyself
Raising your own voice to an audible level means you know yourself better. The Greek philosopher Socrates used the aphorism “Know Thyself”. Knowledge of self is important to your ability to understand and know who you are. To evaluate others more accurately and therefore makes allowances for them and, in turn, acknowledge your own limitations and possibilities, to make decisions that will help you grow and change.
With a trusted voice, you have a better sense of reasoning and the power to make better assessments about yourself and others. Knowing yourself and trusting your intuitive process provides you a better understanding of how you see acquaintances, colleagues, and friends. How they should be accepted and how they accept you. You also become less bothered if someone doesn’t agree with your decisions as now your voice is trusted.
Learning to read others means first reading yourself.
You often make things harder by comparing yourself with the idealised view of others. Again, the training wheels must be removed so you can make choices of your own. You may fall over, you may falter but in the long run, taking responsibility for the failings means success and change becomes so much more worthwhile.
The reason I started doing business counselling is because I found too many business owners, entrepreneurs and individuals who had lost their voice. In turn, losing their passion and at risk of letting fear take over.
If every day you can accept that change will happen, if every day you can look forward to any new challenges and “know” that you will find the answers and overcome them, your voice will be heard as an expert in your industry. Overtime you learn more about yourself and this self-understanding can only help you change for the better.
We hear it everyday – there’s no such thing as failure – really there isn’t. Since when does failing at something mean we fail at life, love or business?
I think waking up each day and knowing that I have to challenge myself is exciting – trying to fit everything in the day, attempting to do my best, be the kindest I can be, truthful about the way I feel or the words I say, understanding and being empathetic, meeting my KPI’s at work, making sure I excercise and eat right – all of it because I know I will fail at something. I will be imperfect.
That’s what makes it more interesting – it’s the learning process that interests me. How many of us do things at the last minute because the pressure makes you be the best you are. (more…)
What’s important in today’s business? Communication, partnerships, customers, profit, loyalty or passion – establishing, building and endorsing relationships is so important in order to have it all.
Today, I experienced how business can lose its connection through electronic communication and assumptions and waste hours in the day. Then in a simple 10minute phone call rebuild it by listening to the tone and purpose of the words said between two intelligent individuals.
Words are often very imprecise vehicles of communication. If anyone else has noticed lately, written English in a world of such diversity and multiculturalism is not always accurate nor does it hold the true spirit of what’s being portrayed or meant.
When someone speaks to you the voice is powerful and the accompanying expressions are a powerful tool to find solutions, create partnerships or win relationships.
In addition, there’s so much information coming at us at once and often we only listen halfheartedly to the conversations around us. Yet, a conversation can still be the most powerful way of communicating. We will respond quicker and pay attention to a friendly approachable voice than one that is dull, monotone or angry.
So if you have issues to resolve, solutions to find maybe pick up the phone, cultivate a responsive tone in your voice and find the obvious benefits that a 10-minute conversation will bring to your life. While speech is how you use words, voice is how you create sound. To your listeners, your voice is a part of who you are and what you believe.
Remember, there’s a message in Your Voice!
