Last week, during the coaching course, I was being coached about my desire to have an honest conversation with a particular individual in my life. I came up with some good insights through that, but the one that stood out was near the end of the session, and without really thinking about it I said, “I need to find my voice.” I said it. It was my voice, but it still caught me a bit off guard because of how accurate it felt.
I’ve written previously about honesty, authenticity, and congruence, but I’m thinking about all of that a lot this week. I think that finding my voice is about speaking, or writing, from a point of authenticity, being honest and in alignment with my values (congruence). I’ve gotten better about that in the past year, but I still find that my aversion to conflict (I’ve always struggled with people being mad at me) and wanting to somewhat fit can silence my authentic voice.
I’m reading Simon Sinek’s book Start With Why right now and a paragraph that I read earlier this week really struck.
Everything you say and everything you do has to prove what you believe. A WHY is just a belief. That’s all it is. HOWs are the actions you to take to realize that belief. And What’s are the results of those actions – everything you say and do … If people don’t buy WHAT you do but WHY you do it, then all these things must be consistent. With consistency people will see and hear, without a shadow of a doubt, what you believe. After all, we live in a tangible world. The only way people will know what you believe is by the things you say and do, if you’re not consistent in the things you say and do, no one will know what you believe. (Start With Why, page 67, emphasis mine)
He was talking about businesses, but the same applies to individuals. People‘s perceptions of you are largely based on what you say and do. If what you say and do don’t align with your “why”, your beliefs about the world and who you want to be in it, what you want from life, then they can’t accurately know what your “why” is.
So now, I’m wrestling with this. I try to be my authentic self on this blog while respecting my boundaries and the wishes of my family. I try to be my authentic self with my friends and family, but admittedly, that whole aversion to conflict thing sometimes gets in the way. And following the advice of Elizabeth Gilbert, I try to be my authentic self with myself, and even that’s sometimes a challenge.
The other night I told my daughter the story about the night I memorized all of the bones in the body. My wife, who works in health care, was a student studying anatomy at the time and I thought I’d impress her. Within a few days I’d forgotten much of what I’d shoved into my brain that night. I now know, as someone with multiple education degrees, cramming might work in the short-term, but that information just won’t stick.
Like many things in my life – e.g. writing, cooking, coaching – I need to practice brining my authentic voice. I need to make it a daily habit to let my voice out, to be authentic, to be in alignment with who I am, what I value, and what I want in life. If I don’t, it won’t stick and nobody, not even me, will know who I really am.
