Your Own Voice

In the book, the 8^th Habit, Stephen Covey focuses on people finding their own voice and moving on from there to greatness. On today’s post I want us to look at how your gifts are the tools with which you will drive your dream to greatness.

Like most of you may know, Effectual Magazine, which is the most visible of the dreams I am living, was born from my personal experiences and struggles.  The message comes from the stuff I have had to deal with and I have been able to overcome.  Even though they were mostly my personal experiences I also realized that others had to be facing different variants of what I was going through.

The issue therefore was not that what I was dealing with was peculiar, the issue became what vehicle I will use to let others know that what they face is not peculiar to them and that some people have found a way out.  In asking myself what the best way was to pass the information across, I considered a lot of options, but I kept coming back to the gift of writing.  It was in a bid to share of myself with others and to find a way to reach many more people than I may be able to reach individually in my lifetime that I chose to write.

The next step became how will I write?  Something occurred to me, and it was the fact that somehow, in our part of the world, people tend to know other people that something happened to, i.e. tell other people’s stories.   I chose to tell my own story, and initially people told me that was not safe, others told me that I was going to run out of stories to tell pretty fast.

Now none of the opinions have come to pass yet, the latter especially because as long as there is breath in me, and I am on a journey, definitely things will continue to happen that I can learn lessons from and share with others.

What is the point of this post? You will only successfully live your dream to greatness if you are able to find your own voice.  While it seems cool to live your life and dreams exactly as the other man is doing, your uniqueness gets eroded and you may never be able to claim originality of the idea. I have been told time and again that the size of Effectual Magazine isn’t what it should be, and I have said again and again that that difference is my unique selling point.

What dream is in your heart today? If you will find a way to express it in your own unique voice, there is no telling how far you will go.  In the words of Stephen Covey, “There is a deep, innate, almost inexpressible yearning within each one of us to find our voice in life.”

For your dream to hit the mark you must let your own voice out, you will be told like I was told that my voice doesn’t fall within any of the available notes, but you know what, it afforded me the opportunity to create a totally new and different note.

Step out today, and live your dreams, make sure you use your own voice though.  You will make it NeverTheLess.

Hugs

Sistar B