Yesterday, I started talking about wisdom and your message. I believe that many of you reading this post desire getting your message out there, except that message may still be a bit unclear, or maybe you find you’re sounding like everyone else in your area of expertise.

How do you tap into your own wisdom and voice?

The first thing I want to say is this: we often cannot hear our own guidance because everything else is so loud. We have our internal chatter and the distractions of email, social media, phone calls, Netflix beckoning (especially if you work at home) and other distractions like foraging for food, choosing to clean up your surroundings, all diversions from you taking purposeful action.

I am experimenting with delaying entry to social media platforms until I have completed those non-negotiable blocks that I spoke about here.

That takes care of some of the noise but really, you have to figure out a way to sit still and decompress. Think of it like meditation, but with your eyes open. If you need privacy, consider sitting on the throne for 15 minutes. This is important.

Another thing I find helpful is to brain dump. Get it all out on paper. A writing meditation of sorts. Curse if you must. Be raw. Write it all down. Then breathe.

Regardless of the method you choose, jot down any ideas that begin to surface once you have introduced some “still” time.

The point is – you have to make room for your wisdom to surface. If not, you will continue comparing yourselves to others who have perhaps figured out what they want to do, and who they want to share their expertise with, filling yourself up instead, with resentment versus clarity.

Which brings me to this: Figuring out what you do best, what is your solution, and what is the solution recipe you want to share can be difficult. However it’s not impossible with some outside help.

Why do you need help?

We already know most of what we need to know; we simply don’t know we know. It is a teacher’s job to draw out the knowledge, to spark and spur the act of recollection.

GUIDING LIGHTS, Eric Liu

Understanding yourself takes a bit of work, but it is worth your while.

In Guiding Lights, Eric Liu shares the story of Ivana Chubbuck. I share this because I’m sure you’ve never heard of her, yet she is one of Hollywood’s most successful and sort after acting coaches. She has transformed Halle Berry, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Jim Carrey, and Charlize Theron, to name a few.

Ivana has a gift, an uncanny ability to take a jumble of unintended signals, a darting look, a tiny flinch, a catch in the voice – and to convert them into a whole story about what moves and makes a person.

She also has a method – The Ivana Chubbuck Method – which she drills into her students, and has since put all of this into a book: “The Power of the Actor: The Chubbuck Technique – The 12-Step Acting Technique That Will Take You from Script to a Living, Breathing, Dynamic Character”.

To summarize – tapping into your wisdom involves the following:

1. Get acquainted with your vulnerabilities, decide on two or three shadow words that resonate, then put a positive spin on them
2. Turn down the noise, and tune into the wisdom that wants to reveal itself to you. Jot down anything that surfaces. These are clues to ideas or next steps
3. Discover what you know, but don’t know you know. This is where the gold is
4. Create your own system or methodology for moving your clients from where they are to where they would like to be.

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