Speak: Find Your Voice, Trust Your Gut, and Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

by Tunde Oyeneyin

The beauty of uncertainty is infinite possibility.

In order to speak, you have to be willing to surrender. You have to know your power. You have to lead with empathy. You have to be authentic, and you have to have the knowledge to back it.

said. If you want to change things, you have to change things.

Your mind is your strongest muscle. It holds the key to your belief about the way you feel and the way you see yourself.

When I go into an interaction without any preconceived notions, I can bring my whole energy to the moment. Energy is real. People feel it. You walk into a room and know if people were just talking about you. If you have a crush, you feel the vibration between you. When I interact with a new person, I’m not saying it’s the same frequency as a crush, but there has to be that openness to connecting that we both feel. A level of excitement. When you can hold on to that feeling with people, it’s refreshing. It feels good. And people respond to it.

People went out of their way to help me, but it wasn’t because I was cute or nice. They wanted to help me because of the energy that I put out to them. You attract the energy that you are.

When I look back at the biggest shifts in my life, doubt was always there. Think about the times when there was a big shift in your life. I’m going to guess you felt the same. Uncertainty, I’ve come to learn, has to exist to give you room to shift. To make room for opportunity to walk in the door.

“The purpose of life is to discover your gift; the work of life is to develop it; and the meaning of life is to give your gift away.”

I believe we should live our lives in purpose, on purpose, and with great purpose. A life well lived is spent in service. Empathy is the root of service. Imagine what this universe would be like if we all tapped into that?

Sam Yo is a Peloton instructor and a former monk. He says, “Life has a way of repeating a situation with a different twist, and being aware of when it comes around again is what helps us to grow and evolve.” From my unexpected, unfathomable tragedy, I learned a lot about myself. In life, every moment that we go through leads us to the moment where we are. We lose jobs. We lose loved ones. Friendships fizzle. There are twisted ankles and burnt dinners and infinite smaller conflicts and challenges that we face every day. In the moment, you don’t realize that your character is being developed. You’re often just trying to survive. But later, looking back, they become clearer. I’d rather have not learned the lesson, but it happened, and in that moment, I could have chosen to be there or to not be there. To show up or to not show up. I’m glad I honored my brother in the most beautiful way. It was the last thing I could do for him. I’m glad I supported my parents and spent time with them when they needed me most. I would give anything not to have lost my brother, but how I reacted? That I would do again. My character is richer and more powerful as a result of the choices I made in my most difficult hour. You can let your past dictate your story or you can pull from it to create something new. Resilience is the process of adapting in the face of adversity, trauma, or tragedy, having the ability to step up and say “yes” even when you’re under stress. My life has required me to be r...

I thought of the Leonard Ravenhill quote: “The opportunity of a lifetime needs to be seized during the lifetime of the opportunity.”

We hear what we need to hear when we need to hear it. You know how it is when there’s an old love song you’ve heard hundreds of times, but one day it comes on and it hits exactly how you feel?

When you show yourself as who you are, your people find you. Authenticity is the intersection of trust and truth.