“The path to finding your real voice is just one click away!”
“Find your true voice in just two days!”
“Seven steps to finding your authentic voice…”
Can we please stop now?
Despite what popular culture tells you, you’re not going to complete a survey, take a BuzzFeed quiz, or watch a series of 3-minute videos and then, suddenly, “find your voice.”
It’s just not going to happen, and it’s time to get real about what it takes to find your authentic voice.
What gurus, trainers, YouTubers, and BuzzFeed quiz developers don’t tell you is that finding your voice takes a boatload of hard work, consistent practice, and a healthy dose of the F-word.
Failure.
Those headlines that get you to click, watch, or buy the “perfect solution” are designed to lead you to what seems like an easy solution. The problem is there isn’t an easy solution that is a substitute for consistency, hard work, and, yes, failure.
As it turns out, “hard, super hard” and “will require a great deal of effort on your part” aren’t headlines that lead to clicks.
Finding your voice requires a consistent choice to work hard. To practice. And to fail a time or two, all while learning from your failure.
The people you admire most, those who have a clear voice, have spent years working to achieve what you envy.
They’ve written (and rewritten) thousands of pages of information.
They’ve spoken (and misspoken) more times than they care to admit and, yes, they have failed, failed again, then failed again but then…each time, gotten back up to try again.
For the folks who have told me they aspire to be the next Brené Brown, keep this in mind: Brené began her research on vulnerability in 2002. Her first TED talk on this topic—the one that launched her into the public eye—didn’t happen until 2010!
She’s been at this a long, long time and didn’t find her voice through an internet link but through consistent practice and hard work.
I don’t know about you, but I am tired of posts, articles, and videos that promise immediate success without the hard work that always goes with success.
The truth is if you want to find your voice, you’re going to have to do the work.
Consistently, accepting failure, and finding success along the way.