There are very few things in life you can count on. People will leave and identities will shed like old skin. The world will change around you. Money will come and go, happiness will ebb and flow. Life will happen, and as it does, almost nothing will stay the same. But you do have one thing that will never abandon you: your voice.

One of the first things I had to give up in this work was caring what other people thought. Not in a flippant, surface-level, “I don’t give a shit” kind of way. I mean in the deeper, cellular sense of unhooking myself from external validation, of refusing to let other people’s opinions, reactions, or silence determine what, or whether I create.

I’ve never been what you’d call “disciplined.” I’ve struggled with structure my whole life. I can’t be rigid, and I rebel against systems. But one of the most profound transformations of my journey has been becoming someone who is devoted to their life’s work. When devotion came along, everything felt different.

Most wellness and transformation professionals wander around acting like their life is made up of a random string of events with no connection to each other. They act as if they just decided to be a coach, a therapist, a healer, or a guide, as if they weren’t driven to it by a life full of experience and conditioning. They don’t see that their work was as inevitable as a river flowing downhill, shaped by every rock, curve, and invisible force acting upon it. And when they come to me for help, the first thing I tell them is, that’s not how it works. 

Self-actualization is like a constant, unseen evolution, a natural, organic unfolding that happens as we live, breathe, and simply exist. But just as invasive species or a lack of necessary conditions like sunlight can hinder a forest's growth, so too can our natural state of becoming be obstructed by the noise of modern life and the weight of cultural conditioning.

Being true to who we are is a paradox—we constantly evolve, yet most of us have felt the discomfort of being what we are not. So, while we shouldn’t try to box in our identity, there are core elements that make us up that are crucial for us to nurture. I consider these all part of our "voice."