MYST 56 Trevitorial: Find Your Voice!




Make Your Someday Today Podcast : Reach Your Goal Weight and Become the Person You Deserve show

Summary: Today’s quote comes from Kimanzi Constable, who was our guest in Episode 32. If you want to hear his entire show, and learn how he lost a LOT of weight, quit his job, started his own business and then was able to move from Milwaukee Wisconsin to Hawaii, go to <a href="MakeYourSomedayToday.com/Episode%2032">MakeYourSomedayToday.com/Episode 32</a>.<br> Kimanzi says to go at your own pace and to not compare yourself to those around you. Why not? I mean, isn’t everyone compared to everyone else? You can go your own way and be your own person. Or you can be one of the sheep. The choice is always yours.<br> <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vf6GMucJc_0/VDw8LgUNxHI/AAAAAAAADxI/3nQcdAExil4/s1600/sheep%2C%2Bcloser.jpg"></a>Photo by<a href="http://www.nilssonlee.se/"> Jonas Nilsson Lee</a>, via <a href="http://unsplash.com/">Unsplash.com</a><br> Don’t get me wrong, I love sheep. Seeing a large flock of walking puffs of clouds over a rolling green hill is relaxing. They are cute (well, at the petting zoo for my kids, they were cute.) They make wool. I love a nice wool suit. And delicious meat (roast leg of lamb is incredible.) And they produces milk for cheese. They are…well, they are animals that graze and exist until we need some part of them.<br> They are a commodity. An object used to create something else for sale. And just about any single sheep can be replaced with any other sheep. They may have different personalities, but they are interchangable in their role within the drove.<br> That is a lot like people, in a way.<br> We are all just a very large, very fast-moving flock of people. Everything we do is a blur. Everything runs together, like a watercolor painting left out in the rain. We are all interchangeable. Oh, it may take some retraining to pull one person out and put a new person in their place, but that is the same as when you introduce a new sheep to the pasture. There are 7 billion people on the planet.<br> <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-r9PCIQVPCJk/VDw-2_7TtdI/AAAAAAAADxQ/ao1Mz_EImbk/s1600/Action.jpg"></a>Photo by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/52278955@N03/">Anna Dziubinska</a>, via <a href="http://unsplash.com/">Unsplash.com</a><br> Or maybe there is just one person, but with seven billion different faces.<br> This is not what I normally write about, is it? Sort of grim. But wait, this is only half the story.<br> Only one position that only I can fill. One area where I am not a commodity.<br> As a person, I am the only ME there is. So I need to make the most of it. While many people can do what I do, I am the only person who does it exactly I as do it. I am the only person with exactly my background and history.<br> That is what makes me separate from the herd. I am a herd of one (to borrow from a US Army slogan.) I use all those experiences to make me a better person at everything.<br> This realization did not happen overnight. I’m 51 years old and it’s only been in the past couple years that I have started to believe this. As an instructor at the college, it took more than five years to find my voice. There is working “outside your comfort zone” and “learning the lay of the land.” I started teaching in January 2009, and it was not until this semester that I finally decided to remove parts of my mask and show the real me. Just yesterday, a colleague commented on how much more engaged I am, and my only response was I finally feel as though my real voice is taken as valid.<br> But the point is that I am finally being myself!<br> Stepping out, seizing your own space, using your own voice, those are all methods of being your own authentic self. And all of those can be intimidating. But until you take those steps, you are just another blurred face in the crowd.<br> If you don’t use your own voice, if you don’t act the way you truly feel, you are not loyal to yourself. You will change as the powers around you chang...