Why is your voice important?
The poet, David Whyte, in one of his most beautiful poems, ‘Everything is Waiting for You’, opens with: ‘Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone. As if life were a progressive and cunning crime, with no witness to the tiny hidden transgressions’
He finishes with: ‘All the birds and the creatures of the world are unutterably themselves. Everything is waiting for you’.
I’ve been reflecting on life and work lately – I’ve had more time to think than I had before, and I am enjoying (mostly) trying to make sense of my relationship with work and a career in health and care and leadership. The work that I am doing at this time in my life, with colleagues at Oasis and the Inspiring Leaders Network, is really engaging me through my head, my heart and my soul, and I have asked myself many times why it is that I took so long to realise that this is what I should be doing.
I use the poem Everything is Waiting for You as an opener in most settings that I am working now, and the reason for that is simple. Most of us seem to live most of our lives in fear, worrying what others might think of what we might have to say, or the way that we look or sound, or the fact that we are different and have a different way of thinking.
The poem is, I think, about many things, but at its most simple, it is a poem that reminds us of two things most clearly. The first is that there is much beauty to be found in the world, in nature, and in relationship with others, if you are courageous enough to choose to see it. The second is that there is no one else in the whole universe like you. No-one else that thinks like you, talks like you, looks like you, acts like you. You are entirely unique. The challenge for us all is to muster the courage to be unutterably ourselves, as all of the birds and the creatures of the world are bound to be, and then to be courageous enough of that to express ourselves, as ourselves.
We carry so much within us. So much depth and talent. So much expectation and disappointment. At our best we are, each of us, beautiful and noble, and kind-hearted and generous.
There is so much waiting to be said, but instead it feels easier to sit and wait to be asked or to have a conversation about it, but only with ourselves. You know that you have ideas about what needs to change and how. You know that you know what better might look like and feel like, and you know that others like you feel the same way. If only you could muster the courage to say it in a place where decisions are made about things like that.
Certainly, you have mentioned all of this, perhaps in a roundabout way, to your line manager, but you know how that goes. They are ambitious and perhaps they don’t want to rock the boat, even though they too know that the boat needs to be rocked. And anyway, they could make you, or break you, so you keep quiet and bottle it all up, knowing that when you reach that point in your career when you are managing people that you will be different; more courageous.
So where does that journey start? The journey to the more courageous. Well, it has already started. It starts with a question and the question is ‘how do I begin?’
There are three important things that I have learned about the world in my life. There are more than three, in fact, but I have chosen to talk about three of them here. The first is that the world is a place that is full of opportunity, if you are willing to believe that it is a place full of opportunity.
The second is that it is full of people who are willing to and who want to help – people who by their nature or who, by virtue of their own learning, have found that we learn so much about ourselves and about the world by supporting others to find their way.
The third – which is related to the second but different because it is a choice that comes from inside each of us, is that all that really matters is love.
So I am thinking about all of this, and about how I found my own way to begin to answer the question. It will not come as a surprise, given where this piece is being published, that finding a coach – an independent, objective, courageous, curious friend, has been an important part of my journey of discovery. I was lucky. My coach found me. To this day, I do not really know how it happened, apart from it being one of those ‘Sliding Doors’ moments in my life. That’s another thing that I have learned, by the way. I have learned that there are angels, who appear at just the right moment in our lives, if you are willing to believe in such a thing (I know this sounds like what some might call ‘magical thinking’, and I do not disagree. It is. But there is such a thing as magic, if you are willing to believe in its possibility.) My life story is a story about how each of my angels found me and helped me to see something in myself that I was struggling to see.
There is a whole other piece to write about how having a coaching relationship helped me in my work, my leadership and in my life, but three things I will say here. The first is about the gift of listening, and the power of finding a space in relationship with another in which you are certain that you are being heard. A space in which someone else is actually standing beside you and really trying to see the world from your perspective; ‘this is what I heard you say. Is that what you meant?’
The second is the opportunity, in a safe space, to step away from the drama and to become, for a moment or two, an observer, and to be held in that space by another who is curious about what I might be observing, and curious about the way in which I describe what it is that I am observing, and who is curious about the choices that I make as I describe what it is that I am observing.
The third is about accountability, and the power of being held in a space with another in which it is possible to find a way to an action in response to what I am learning, and to know that next time we talk I will be talking about what happened for me and my relationship with the world next, and what it was like going back into the world with my learning, insights and actions. That is proper accountability; the answer to the question ‘so what have you learned?’
So what am I learning? How has being in a coaching relationship changed me, and what have I learned?
I am learning that my voice is important. It is no more important than is anyone else’s voice, but it is just as important. There is nobody else in the whole universe who thinks like me, talks like me, acts like me or has the unique experience of the world that I have, and on some things, where I have taken the care and demonstrated the courage to learn more – perhaps made more mistakes than others, then it is really important that I use my voice to help others and to help myself.
I am learning that it is important to think carefully about how I use my voice. I am learning that words are very important, and that we need to choose the words that we use carefully. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can break my heart. We need to be careful in the choice that we make about the words that we use, and equally attentive in the way that we choose the words that we listen to.
I am learning that it is possible for one person to change the world, but that it is impossible to control the way that it changes, and that most of the time all I can do is to be mindful about the way in which I respond to the way in which it changes.
And I have already learned, but need to constantly remind myself and be reminded by others who are important to me, that all that really matters is love.
Asking for help. Finding a way to muster the courage to ask for help. That’s the thing. Once you have mastered that one, the rest will follow.
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