Finding Your Voice
Add a CommentPlease welcome guest blogger Agapi Stassinopulos. Born in Athens, Greece, she tours the country as a motivational speaker and is the author of Conversations with the Goddesses and Gods and Goddesses in Love. Agapi recently collaborated with her sister, Arianna Huffington, to complete her book, On Becoming Fearless, from which her workshops were developed.
A personal friend, Agapi has been the source of so much inspiration. Her insights and wisdom have helped keep me going and kicked me in the butt when I really needed it. I have no doubt you will walk away with something powerful from her post below on Finding Your Own Voice.
And remember; be YOU - everyday!
Now that Hillary Clinton has found her voice, there are no excuses why each one of us doesn’t start looking for our own voice immediately.
So here are some of my tips on how to go about finding your own voice.
In the case of Hillary Clinton, she didn’t find her voice - her voice found her. 
In a moment of crashing reality that she could loose the nomination, she was humbled, tired and defenseless, but she knew that she had to keep going to the very end.
Her voice of vulnerability opened up and took over. The façade of pretending that everything was great and cheery cracked and her true emotions came through. At a moment of loss came the truth that none of this is easy.
I don’t think Hillary Clinton was crying for the country at that moment. I think she was crying for herself, for how hard it is to keep going when the challenges keep coming at you — and God knows she has had many. But good for her that she allowed that truth to come out at that moment and that she didn’t suppress it.
Being understood and embraced gave her confidence that more of her authentic self, that part that has been so carefully contained, can now come through. She became more human.
So what can we learn from this? What can we apply to the way we live our lives off the campaign trail? Let’s take a look:
Key Number I: Embrace Adversity.
Our voice often comes when we don’t get what we want or we don’t get what we think is “ours”, when life doesn’t meet us at the point of our expectations. You don’t get the job you want, you don’t get the guy or girl, someone you love leaves you, the deal falls through, you have a health scare, or someone you love does. All these are signposts.
Your authentic self, your unconditional self, is often the one that comes through when the conditions of your life, or the life you thought you built for yourself, start to crack. That’s when the ray of light that is your authenticity, your voice, comes shining through — and it is a breath of fresh air.
Key Number II: Let Go.
When you let go of you self imposed ideas and images of who you should or should not be, when you release the “not good enoughs” or those scripts we all write for ourselves that suffocate us, you liberate yourself and YOU come through.
Key Number III: You can’t please all of the people all of the time.
You can’t want to be liked and want to find your voice at the same time. Very often, finding your voice comes with the disapproval of others. It comes from standing on your own, validated by no one, with a series of yeses from you to you.
You start to build your intuition muscle. And then one day you realize you are standing in your fullness because a loud voice inside of you said, “WHAT PEOPLE THINK OR FEEL ABOUT ME IS NONE OF MY BUSINESS.” You hear your calling and you follow it. You feel the spark and you ignite it with the next action and the next and you build a momentum of speaking your truth, acting your truth and doing those things that express your heart, your passion, your joy, your creativity. You stop giving up your inner territory to your parents voice, to your Mother’s voice, to your “I must protect my image” voice, to your, “HOW WILL I BE PERCEIVED IF I DID OR SAID THAT” voice.
It is only when we give up wanting to be perceived in a certain particular way that we can break the mold and experience our authentic true voice. You might just be surprised to find that there is a huge fun club that embraces us and wants to hear from us, other voices that resonate with yours. So experiment. Try on for size some things that enliven you and some that “deaden” you, per see, to see how it feels in your soul.
I hear so many people say, “but I don’t have anything to say.” Hogwash! Challenge that. Who says you have nothing to say? Who put that idea in your head? It’s nonsense! You have something to say because you matter and when you matter enough to yourself you allow yourself to speak and express.
For me, finding my voice came much later in my life. After years of pursuing an acting career at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London to chasing Hollywood with my identity so wrapped up in being an actress. Then, not getting the parts, experiencing so much rejection and internalizing it. This lead to self-doubt and finally to giving up, to wanting it so much but choosing to search and grow instead and ask myself two fundamental questions, “What makes me happy? What do I love to do the most?”
The answer was, “express myself, share myself and share my gifts.” “Be unconditional,” said my voice. “Go. Don’t wait for Hollywood and Broadway go share what you have now.”
“There are hundred of ways to kneel and kiss the ground,” says Rumi. And indeed they were. I embarked on putting my one woman show together with all my favorite monologues and told my favorite stories of the Greek myths, and the phantom of an acting career started to melt like smoke was leaving me and I felt light hearted and happy because I was not longer waiting for “them” to hire me. I was now creating the opportunities for myself and I found amazing support from all sort of sources that said yes to me because I had let go of that image of myself as “just an actress.” I had released that script I wrote for myself. I reversed the tide and my voice, my authentic voice, was now speaking.
Be sure that at first I felt timid and fragile, but soon that changed and I felt empowered because what I had found was mine. I had birthed it and no one could take it away from me. I was now freely giving it away and at that point I felt the true sense of success enriching my life.
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings,” writes Shakespeare in Julies Cesar. So let’s start digging, unmasking and sending messages to ourselves. You are worth your own voice, however faint it is, let it come out for your own sake, speak your truth at all times and put your compassion behind it. Your human frailties and voice are bound to find you and enrich your life. Let them. If others happen to be touched by it, you’ve got the kingdom right there in front of you. Your heart is knocking and the clock is ticking. Wake up and meet yourself like never before and you’ll know how lovable you are and then your voice will speak through and it will amaze you!
