How to know your voice

That's the journey I've been on

Today I share with you my story.

I recently joined a public speaking club, and this week I gave my first speech. It's supposed to be an introduction of yourself to the club, to give them a little background of who you are and why you're there.

I wrote it from my heart, with much willingness to learn from the feedback on it, and certain that no one would understand it. But whatever, this is my story. I expected nothing.

But the response I got to it surprised me in every way possible.

At the end of the session, multiple people came to me saying, "It felt like you're talking about me."

So, I thought that it could be interesting to share here too.

Later, I also realized that this is the journey that pushed me to dive so much into psychology, understanding of the self, and relationships. And why I write about these things here.

“What's my voice?"

That's the question I've been asking myself my entire life.

Which is a funny thing to say, because I come from Brazil, which means that I grew up in the middle of loud voices.

I challenge you to sit at a dinner table with a bunch of Brazilians and get a clue on what they're talking about. They're loud, they speak over each other, and it's hard to follow only one thread of the multiple conversations happening at the same time.

But also another characteristics of Brazilian people, is that in general, they are really nice.

And when I reflect back,

I notice that I grew up surrounded by loud, nice people who had no voices.

👉 They repressed their feelings

👉  Shut down their real thoughts and;

👉  Sometimes acted in ways they didn't really want but believed it would make them a good person.

What this taught me growing up was that being a loud, nice person was more important than speaking my voice.

I learned that others' perception of me made me who I am. So, I better act accordingly.

"What will they think about me?" was an unconscious question that was constantly running in the back of my mind.

Six years ago, I left Brazil with a one-way ticket to Portugal.

I had no idea of what I was doing at the time.

But there was a voice inside guiding me all the way through.

During this time, I was challenged in all kinds of ways you can think about: I worked for myself, I worked for companies, I was out of work, I created a startup — it didn't work, of course, that's why it's called a startup. It didn't necessarily happen in this order.

But I was following the voice inside of me.

And still, after so many years and so many different experiences following this inner voice, I still couldn't figure out what it is.

"What's my expression in this world?" was still an unanswered question.

I was kind of expecting it to happen like in the movies, you know… you listen to your inner voice, you follow the signs, and you find your happy destiny!

Isn't this the way life is supposed to work???

So, I went to investigate: “What was stopping my inner voice to be translated into my outer voice?”

And the diagnostic was: I wanted to be liked.

👉 I learned to ignore my discomforts so that other people would be more comfortable.

👉 I hid myself when something was not perfect, afraid that it would make me less of a person.

👉 I had learned that I would only be loved if I shrank myself to attend to everyone else's needs first.

So, despite the inner voice was there trying to speak. It never really had a chance.

I was constantly suffocating it even before it could reach the surface.

At some point, I suffocate it so many times, for so long, that the inner voice quiet down and I couldn't hear it anymore.

I was so focused on trying to find my voice through external validation that suddenly, when I realized…

I was so far away from myself.

I lost my vitality, my creativity, my ambition, my vision..

It was not easy to realize this.

But life was kind enough to keep throwing rocks and giving me shocks, until I started noticing…

That it was time to go home, maybe for the first time ever — but not to Brazil, to myself.

And as I'm enjoying my recent and newfound vitality, creativity, and vision, and still exploring how these will unfold for me, I'm still unclear on the main question: "What's my voice?"

I explored so many different paths in this quest…

Including taking singing lessons.

But no, I'm not a singer. I went to my singing instructor with a clear ask: "I play guitar sometimes for fun, but I never play with my friends because I don't think I have a good voice."

What he told me was that "there's no such thing as bad voices, there are only people who know their voices, and those who don't. People think they don't have good voices because they try to imitate other voices, instead of knowing their own."

That was a punch, and a lesson. Which after a few months of practicing I experienced to be true.

Then, the other day…

I heard about Toastmasters in a podcast.

And now that I was more familiar with the sound of my voice, I thought that maybe this could be a place where I could practice getting to know the content of my voice.

So, I came to my first session as a guest to see what this was about, and the first speech I heard started with a poem.

I'm not big fan of poems.

But there's one poem, only one poem, that has been with me along all these six years, that gave strength, reflection, and guidance when I needed: The road not taken by Robert Frost.

As I heard the first words coming out of the speaker mouth, my body reaction was “are you fucking kidding me?”. Some people call it 'signs'.

Once I heard, “if you want to find your voice, you better start speaking." So, here I am…

On a closing note, if you're on a similar journey I highly encourage you to find safe places - or anywhere really - to start speaking whatever.

This newsletter started with an attempt to put my thoughts out there when I had no idea what I really wanted to talk about, but I knew that I had a lot to say. After 13 issues, I learned a lot about myself, improved my writing skills, and I noticed it's time to "rebrand" this.

I started with "an exploration of the invisible dynamics of life" to encompass everything I liked to read and study, but as I write, I see that it always ends up converging to explore the relationships we develop with ourselves and others.

I would never have known if I hadn't started speaking.

With love,

Nat

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