Ever notice how many voices are trying to speak for you?
It may have always been the case. Yet it seems there’s an incessant cacophony, a clattering hubbub that’s become so prevalent if it were to ever stop we’d all do it in unison:
“SH-H! WHAT WAS THAT?”
“Grampa, what is that?”
“Well, we used to call what you’re not hearing, “morning”. It was a few precious minutes before all the busyness of each day started when we all could just sit on the porch with the morning paper, a good cup of coffee, and sort of ease into our day.”
“Did you always hafta get up so early to not hear it?”
“Nope. Noise and racket stayed in bed a little longer back then.”
24-hour everything has made white noise a booming industry. Pandora is pandemic. The din is so deafening we’re awkward around quietness – sort of like having to sit next to your weird aunt at the dinner table.
Change? Not happening. The only choice we seem to have is which noise we prefer: someone else’s or our own.
The #9 way to NAIL “TREMENDOUS” in your daily living is to aggressively articulate: speak your own message. Say your own truth.
There will always be Other People in your life doing their best to influence your thinking and your message. If you don’t know what your message is, you’ll likely let ’em. People like Karl Rove and Bob Beckel get paid very well to tell you what to think.
They’re not alone. Well-meaning and articulate people who surround you, whom you respect, are always ready to step in and fill the ‘message void’ with what they think you should be saying. If their words really are yours, then you could just record them and save your throat. Effortless way to get ‘your’ message out there. What a deal!
If, on the other hand, you prefer stating your own case, telling your own story and articulating your own message, I’m here to encourage you: do that.
You speak your truth.
“Well, um, that presupposes I know what mine is. Right?”
Yes. Friend, you’d be surprised how many men and women go through life spouting all sorts of great stuff they’ve been fed by significant others in their lives–yet rarely if ever sit down, decide what is their individual, specific message, truth, and life-goals, and then set out to speak them.
“But aren’t we all to a degree influenced by things others have thought and said and written?”
Sure. There is no such thing at this point in Earth history as Original Thought. Somebody, somewhere has brought up that particular little jewel before. Yet there’s an identifiable difference between you parroting something somebody else always says, and you looking others in the eye and speaking something you’ve proven of worth in your own life and experience. It has the ring of authenticity to it. You sound like you mean it–like you’ve cleared away all the clippings and dead branches and blowing leaves of others’ opinions, and have decided what is YOUR message, YOUR story.
Have you? Or do you still tend to operate according to what significant persons in your life all want you to think and speak and do?
- What is your message?
- What do you want to be and do?
- What has you impassioned right here, right now, today?
- THAT, my friend, is your truth, your message.
Speak it, whether or not it agrees with your ‘advisors’. You know your heart, your passions, what drives you. That’s where your gifts are, where you’ll do your best!
You’ll never do your best by always trying to please the rest.
You can have a variety of interests, even some that intersect with those of friends that are positive and enjoyable. Remember: the more passionate about their pursuits your closest friends are, the more pressure they’ll exert on you to speak their message and truth, not your own. All that will do is further frustrate you. Don’t let that happen.
You don’t have to be loud, brusk, unkind or even forceful. But I believe you need to be consistent in letting even your closest friends know: “I speak for me. The only One I ultimately have to please is God. It is to THIS I give my best efforts, thought and energy. THIS is my niche, my calling–who I am, what I do!”
You will set them back a little, especially if you’ve allowed them to think they have more control over your life, message and destiny than they actually do. Yet you’ll be the stronger for it.
Eventually, so will they.
Aggressively articulate it. BE your message: live it. Let them see it.
Neither of you will ever be quite the same.
© D. Dean Boone, September 2014