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.

Don’t shrink yourself to fit into small spaces. If the space doesn’t fit, find a new one. Being

Every human interaction is unique, a moment in time in which we have the chance to understand the person standing in front of us.

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 power was in my hands. I didn’t want to rush writing it. There was beauty, I realized, in the space I now had.

and I soon realized that caring people reveal themselves wherever they are.

The psychiatrist David Viscott said, “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?

There is a sensation I get when I am truly existing in a moment, moving in the right direction, driven and inspired. It’s like there’s a drumbeat. At first the thumping feels like nerves, but as I lean in, it starts to feel like my own heartbeat. Over time, I’ve realized it’s my connection to my purpose.

“May whatever Yetunde says be the right thing to say.”

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.”

We

don’t choose what happens to us, we choose how we react to it. Today’s a new day; choose to be new in it.

Trusting your gut is choosing to lean toward the voice that

propels you forward.

believe that even when things don’t work out, they are working out, and it will work out, because everything

is happening in your favor. The door wasn’t closed.

Doubt is an internal alert system saying that it’s time to shift. Without doubting where we are, we can’t realize where we need to be.

all the time. Everything

you want is happening right now,

what is. When we surrender to what is, we lean into our power.

she manage to do it all? “Tunde, life comes in seasons,” she told me. “Everything shifts and changes. I try to get the most out of the season that I’m in, because I know I’ll never get it back.”

You have to be open to taking any direction, or else when you’re thrown off course you won’t find the detour that helps you get back on track.

myself. A

goal is a wish, but a standard holds you accountable.

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

“Because on the other side of pain is growth. Black lives matter. They’ve always mattered. This is not the first

There was such beauty, even in heartbreak, because of how much the love mattered. So much of the pain I’ve experienced in my life has been tied to love. To love is to accept pain, to take it in, to grow from it, and to love again.