The subtle shifts in energy you observe in your body.

The fulfilment and pride in observing yourself evolve, in the way you show up, think, reflect, speak, and respond to your fears and doubts.

The peace you feel deep in your core when you make decisions aligned to you, when you say yes or no and stand by your boundaries.

The conviction you feel surging within you as you speak your truth and share your ideas and perspectives.

And sure, aligned clients will come, amazing opportunities will flow your way.

But the true ROI of inner work is the home you’ve created within yourself, one that feels safe and warm. The inner knowing that you belong deeply to yourself. No one else’s opinion can shake that. No form of external validation will change that.

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Before I started doing the inner work 6 years ago, I was building my career based on external validation and living my life fuelled by short term gratification.

I was constantly thinking that if I don’t do better, I will lose out and be left behind. I felt like I needed to be running ahead of my peers. I so badly wanted to feel good enough. I was living in a state of “I need to do this” or “I want things to go my way” — a state of expectation.

What started out as a business I built from my passion of using my voice, turned into my own strict metric of success. And so I worked hard, on steroids. Every waking moment I thought about work. Until I could feel my passion and joy leaving me.

I felt like I was living in a dark and cold cave with my thoughts. When I left the cave, I was all smiles and laughter, because people and connection genuinely do light me up. But when I’m back in the cave, I felt alone and empty.

It took me reaching rock bottom – when I started waking up everyday with dread – when I thought “Something has to change!”.

It’s uncomfortable to sit with yourself for the tough conversations, to acknowledge those uncomfortable emotions, to keep yourself accountable to the habits you’ve committed to.

It takes time and patience to be still and observe what makes your heart sing and your soul beam with joy. It takes immense discipline to create space for you to be alone with your thoughts.

It is truly much easier to go along with the clockwork hustle you’ve mastered over the years. Overtime you learn to mute your emotions and just take action.

But action without intention almost always leads to misery and emptiness.

Today, I do work much more joy and conviction. I can’t control what the future holds, but I know that it will be one I love, simply because every step I take is in alignment with my values and intention. Additionally, it is when we build a deeper relationship with our voice that the content we create comes out effortlessly strategic. The steps we take and decisions we make come naturally to us.

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Every oyv coachee of mine who joins the Own Your Voice Program would be introduced to the inner work – and they choose to invest time and energy into integrating inner work into their life, even with their packed even with a busy schedule in their career/ leading teams/ being a mom of 3 kids…

They choose to dive inward and meet their fears, doubts and insecurities, not just because they want to show up as their most authentic self, but because they know that this work is worth it.

Owning Your Voice requires the inner and outer work.

Inner work is the process of understanding your beliefs, thoughts and emotions. It is adjusting and creating your mindset so that it helps you better facilitate your goals and live a happier life according to your values.

Outer work is the work you do that is seen by others. It is the actions you take to move closer to your goals. 

The reason why Owning Your Voice requires BOTH inner and outer work is because the depth of connection you have with yourself is reflected in the quality of your thoughts, which influence the transformative power of your voice.

You’ll know you’re overly focused on outerwork and neglecting inner work when: 

• You feel lethargic and on the verge of burnout. 
• You start finding it hard to put your thoughts into content. 
• The things you used to do well now feel harder.
• You find yourself often spiralling through mind-drama and negative thoughts. 
• You have to force yourself to take action.

You’ll know you’re overly focused on innerwork and not applying it to your outer work when: 

• You hold back from taking action because you feel like you need to learn more, do more inner work and more self-healing. 

The quality of your outer work reflects the depth of your inner work. I’ve come to realise that we often know what we need to do to move our business forward. We have plenty of thoughts in our mind waiting to emerge as powerful content for our audience. What stops us is the mind drama we have in our head. 

Owning Your Voice is not something you do for one season of life. It’s a lifelong journey of self-discovery, of building undeniable trust with your voice. The earlier you start this journey, the earlier you get the privilege of experiencing a life of your own design, walking this earth as your most aligned self.

I was having a conversation with a friend and she asked: “Say we want to learn how to not be dependent on external validation, how do we know we’re good at something when we don’t have anyone to tell us that?”

You’ll know you’re good at something when you feel deeply connected with yourself, when you feel the ease and flow as you do that work, and even when things get hard, you find yourself inspired to come up with solutions.

Expanding your capacity for inner work can look like: 

• Allowing yourself to feel the discomfort from taking a pause to observe your thoughts and emotions
• Setting aside time for daily reflection and communicating with yourself

Expanding your capacity for outer work can look like: 

• Allowing yourself to take imperfect action and expect the possibility of failure and rejection

When you do the inner AND outer work, you find that life becomes so much more fulfilling. It becomes simpler. It doesn’t become easier, because challenges are inevitable for us to grow and evolve. But life does become simpler, because when we build a deep connection with our inner voice and allow it to guide our thoughts, decisions and way of life, we are better equipped to respond to fear and take control of our mind drama.

Life becomes simpler when we live in alignment with our values and anchor ourselves on our philosophies.