How To Be Heard and Do What Matters (Part 2)

08 Apr How To Be Heard and Do What Matters (Part 2)

Hey Legends,

So what was the one decision from Part 1 that changed everything for our Free Start a Blog Writing Challenge winner Melinda Stanford?  Let’s hear from her.

Welcome Back Melinda, take it away!

The decision I made in 2013, in response to feeling stuck and dealing with unremitting eye pain, was what really changed my life:

I was no longer going to listen to others’ voices and instead listen to my own. 

I started taking risks and caring a lot less about what other people thought and great things began to happen:

• I went back to school to get certified as a coach so that I could coach outside the context of voice lessons.
• I started my business called World Stage Coaching, helping women to find their voice and claim their world stage.
• My husband and I pulled our two children out of school for six months while we traveled through Asia and Oceania. My husband did academic research, while I planned and coordinated the trip (including 16 flights!) and home-schooled our kids. I was also able to coach clients while traveling.
• I released my second CD, a jazz recording.

Then 15 months ago something happened that completely transformed my world.

I found Live Your Legend.

It wasn’t until I took the Live Your Legend Start a Blog Challenge that I began writing consistently and re-found my voice.

I had been blogging in my mind long before I started actual blogging…

But everything changed when I COMMITTED to getting my writing out of my head and into the world.  I was going to be heard!

I started a blog called Your World Stage as an adjunct to my coaching business, World Stage Coaching, which helps women who are stuck and playing small claim their world stage.  When I started writing, I realized I had lost a lot of confidence from listening to the outside world’s voices, but that writing could help me to figure out what I felt and believed.

Later last year, I took the course How to Connect With Anyone. For the first time, I started to meet people with similar values and goals; people who could cheer me on. (Live Your Legend Plug: Enrollment is now open and the self-paced course begins later this month)

Here are the 4 Top Ways to Begin to Do Something that Matters, which aligns with the four pillars of Live Your Legend.

1. BECOME A SELF-EXPERT: I became a detective (figuratively). I looked back at old journals and photo albums to remind myself what I loved and the kind of people whom I needed to surround myself with. I also started recording my dreams to figure out what I was feeling and needing on an unconscious level. Throughout my life, creating and performing music has fed my soul, and yet I realized that in the busyness of my life, I was doing less and less creating. I realized how passionate I was about coaching and how much I loved to write, and that I knew how to rediscover my voice because I had been teaching that to others for years.
2. DO YOUR IMPOSSIBLE: I reconnected to my greatest joys. I began by committing to traveling more, since I feel most happy and like myself when I’m exploring new places. My husband, who grew up all over the world, and I both realized how important this was for our family. We had traveled a lot before we were parents, but we weren’t sure how traveling would work with kids. We did spend a summer in Japan when the kids were babies, and took them to England and France when they were 7 and 5, but that didn’t feel like enough. Our experience traveling through and living in Hawaii, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand and Japan for six months was transformational because we got to teach our children how to be world citizens and break free of constraints we had taken on back home. I also returned to songwriting and started singing more. I recorded a second CD—nine years after my first had been released. I went to coaching school to get certified in coaching, since I loved it and had been doing it for 20 years as a natural outgrowth of my vocal coaching business. I started listening to new music, taking long walks through nature, and doing photography.
3. SURROUND YOURSELF WITH PASSIONATE PEOPLE: I looked for a new, positive tribe to support and inspire me, and I learned to say NO a lot. I made notes about the people in my life who made me feel excited and joyful, and noticed who drained me. I made a list of the types of people I wanted to attract as friends, colleagues and clients. I noticed when those types of people showed up and I took the initiative to get to know them. I had felt drained and over-scheduled and I realized that if I didn’t get a clear sense of what I wanted to do, other people would decide that for me. I had been trying to be all things to all people and was definitely addicted to pleasing.  I started keeping track of how many times I could say “no” to something I didn’t want to do, so that I would have the time and space to say “YES” to me.   I realized that the more I said “no” to people and activities that I didn’t want, the more space I was creating for something better.
4. DO SOMETHING THAT MATTERS: I started blogging and got my writing out into the world. I also committed to growing my  business, which helps women who feel lost and dis-empowered to find their confidence again and re-connect with their greatest joys. I am committed to helping women find their voice, when they’ve lost it, and claim the world stage that is waiting there for them.

I have come to know who I am and what matters to me and I am doing things that I didn’t think were possible.

I do things that scare me, like learning to build a business and getting my voice out into the world, and I am constantly challenging myself to do more. I’m also consciously surrounding myself with people who make me feel alive.

Finally, I am asking myself every day how I can make a difference in the lives of my family, my friends, my clients, my audiences, and in the greater world. When a client goes from playing small to living big, I realize that there is now one more person who has found her voice and is sharing her talents with the world.

I’d love to hear from you and your own journey!  Please leave a comment below and I’ll respond ASAP.

Melinda

P.S. Ready to be heard, do what matters and start your own blog? We put something together that will make it easy.