The King's Speech, Part 3: How To Find Your Voice

“The King’s Speech” is the powerful, Oscar-winning true story of one man’s quest to find his voice and of those closest to him who help him find it.  For a description of the story, read my post. As the red light in King George VI’s broadcast room begins blinking to signal the momentous moment for the royal global broadcast, his speech therapist and friend Lional Logue, knowing how nervous the King is, says to the King, “Forget everything else and just say it to me.”

So I've been unpacking the three parts of that statement--what they say about discovering your unique, personal significance (your voice) and how can you use your voice to put your unique stamp on the world.  My last post described the importance of not letting the past define your present and future.  Now for the second part of Lionel's statement to the King.

And just say it …

This too is a challenge.  One of the problems is, as our internet-based society is showing us, there is no lack of voices shouting stuff all the time.  Much of the time it's just noise.  People think that because the web gives an instant global platform, all they have to do is shout out and the world listens.  Not true.  We have to know what we’re trying to say; and to say it so that people truly listen, it has to come from inside us and express who we are so that there's genuine alignment; which means we have to know ourselves, to believe ourselves, to have confidence in who we are.

This is a 3-step process and journey:  self-awareness that must be followed by self possession that produces authentic self expression.

I like the way Stephen Covey, in his powerful book The 8^th Habit, defines Voice:  “Voice is unique personal significance--significance that is revealed as we face our greatest challenges and which makes us equal to them.” (p. 5)

Here’s how he describes finding this Voice.  Voice lies at the nexus between four areas of our lives:  Talent; Passion; Need; and Conscience.

Talent – your natural gifts and strengths; Passion – those things that naturally energize, excite, motivate, and inspire you; Need – a problem in the world that speaks to you and that you can effectively help solve, including what the world needs enough to pay you for; and Conscience – that still, small voice within that assures you of what is right, truth for you, and that prompts you to actually do it.

“When you engage in things that tap your talent and fuel your passion – that rises out of a great need in the world that you feel drawn by conscience to help meet – therein lies your voice, your calling, your soul’s code.” (p. 5)

Here’s the truth:  there is a deep, innate, almost inexpressible yearning within each one of us to find our voice in life.  King George VI (Bertie) felt that yearning.  The reason he acted out in such anger and rage often was because he couldn’t understand his Voice – he didn’t think he had a Voice or certainly wasn’t worthy of a Voice or simply wasn’t capable of expressing his Voice if he had one – he was stumped, paralyzed by the many impediments in his life, speech being only one of them.  But the longing was there.  He had a conscience that was prompting him.  He began to develop a passion.  He certainly was aware of the need in his Empire that the King was called to meet.  And little by little he developed and embraced his talents, his unique strengths and gifts.  Until finally he expressed what ended up being a very powerful Voice not only in his Empire but also in the world.

Jesus, who was called the Word, spoke with such power because he spoke with his true voice, the voice that came from his personal truth, his identity as the true expression of God.  The New Testament writers referred to him as the Word of God.  And when Jesus spoke, people were drawn to him, they listened, they were moved, inspired, and transformed.  He wasn't just making noise.  He had captured his voice and spoke it with authority because it came from his core identity.  "I am the truth, the way, and the life," he said.  He not only spoke his voice, he lived his voice.  His voice found its highest expression in action.  The two were perfectly aligned.  And people followed, finding their own voice along the way, too.

So I have to enter into self-awareness – to look at these four areas to see what my unique truth is – what the expression of my core self truly is.  Have you ever noticed like I have that the closer we get to this truth, the more our conscience begins to activate – I start feeling strongly in my inner spirit about expressing this truth.  I feel dis-ease unless I'm expressing this truth.  That’s conscience – that’s the spirit in me that is tapping into the Divine Spirit and Fingerprint within me.  That Spirit is calling out to be expressed in my personal, unique way.  And when that conscience speaks and pushes strongly enough, I have to do something about it.  I have to act.

And the first action is the courage of self possession of that truth.  I must embrace myself with confidence.  I accept myself for who I truly am.  I begin to see clearly my uniqueness and I start falling in love with it.

So much so that then I compelled to the next action - authentic self expression – I have to do something tangible about it.  I know--I speak--I act.

The Hebrew prophet named Jeremiah described this undying urge to express his Voice.  He was a prophet with an almost impossible task:  speak truth to people who had lost their voice and their identity and had wandered far from God.  His challenge:  they didn't want to hear him speak truth.  So they persecuted him, laughed at him, ridiculed him, refused to listen to him, and ultimately killed him.  He faced the temptation regularly to give up, to stop speaking his voice from God, and take an early retirement.  But whenever he was tempted, here's what happened to him:

9 Sometimes I say to myself,

"Forget it! No more God-Messages from me!"

But then the Words becomes like a burning fire inside me,

deep within my bones.

I get tired of trying to hold it inside of me,

and finally, I cannot hold it in.”  Jeremiah 20:9

Once I find my voice, my true voice that comes from deep inside me and reflects my personal truth and identity, I am compelled to speak it, even at great cost.  That's my conscience working, nudging me to speak, empowering me to confidence and courage.  And that conscience won't stop until you and I speak and live our voice, just like Jeremiah, just like Jesus, and even like King George VI.

PERSONAL REFLECTION:  Take some time to define and flesh out what each of those four areas Covey refers to would look like in your life.  Where do they all converge for you?  How does that describe your Voice – your unique personal significance?

Next post, we'll look at the last part of The King's Speech:  what do we need in place to be empowered to speak our voice courageously?

Four Ways To Overcome the Spirit of Indifference

We all read about it in the news last Monday.  Many of us saw the video.  Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax, 31, a Guatemalan immigrant who went to New York City in order to help his family back home, made his living as a day laborer, and when the economy crumbled, so did his job prospects. He wound up homeless, first living in shelters and then finally on the streets. A grainy surveillance video trained on a street in Jamaica, Queens, on April 18 captured the final moments of Mr. Tale-Yax’s life: A couple argues, Mr. Tale-Yax comes to the woman’s aid, the man stabs him in the stomach and runs away.

Helping a stranger was the last act of a broken man.

The video has made headlines across the globe, not just for its brutality, but for the indifference it seems to convey. It shows Mr. Tale-Yax lying face down for more than an hour on a sidewalk on 144th Street, near 88th Road, his life slipping away on the pavement as dozens of people walk past him.  Over an hour later, the paramedics arrive to find him lying in a pool of his blood.  They pronounce him dead at the scene.

I would be curious to interview the 2 dozen or more people who walked past Hugo as he lay there on the street Monday evening.  What did they notice?  Anything unusual or just another New York City scene?  If they did notice, what did they feel or think as they saw him?  Did they immediately assume he was simply another drunk passed out on the street corner?  Or they did see him as one of "those" illegal immigrants who shouldn't be here and doesn't deserve the City's help?  Did they simply not know he was in any trouble?  Did they perhaps naturally or even unconsciously ascribe the whole scene to a normal urban landscape - it's just the way it is here in the City?  Did they notice something wrong but assume someone else would call it in to 911?  Were they busily on their way to an appointment so they couldn't take the time to stop?  Were they afraid to get involved (after all, here in the City even good samaritans get hurt - this story is a good example of that danger)?

Why would over 24 people walk by a hurt and dying man without even stopping?  Makes you wonder, doesn't it.  What might you have done?

His brother Roland refused to watch the video when he was first told a tape existed, but found he could not avoid it on the local news. He was in shock, he said, that nobody helped his brother.

"Any animal that is hurt on the street, the city or anybody walking by goes to rescue it. But in this case, he saved this woman's life, and where was the conscience of the people around him?" Rolando Tale-Yax said.  "They have to realize that it could be a member of their family who is the next victim. … I just hope it doesn't happen again."

Perhaps this sad and tragic story provides some insight as to significant steps you and I can take to act more compassionately as a general life style.

One, change indifference.  Contrary to popular opinion that indifference is simply at the core of who we are as humans - it's evidence of our fallen nature - original sin - so we'll sometimes say, "Oh well, it's just the way we are - we're wired for indifference" - recent research shows otherwise.

In reality,  there is actually a biological basis for compassion.  There is a specific part of our brain that is wired for a compassion response.  Experiments with both mothers with their babies and people presented with images of victims of suffering showed similar neurological reactions.  The region of the brain associated with positive emotions literally lit up.  "This consistency strongly suggests that compassion isn't simply a fickle or irrational emotion, but rather an innate human response embedded into the folds of our brains," writes Dacher Keltner, PhD , a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

The good news is that an attitude of indifference can therefore be radically changed.  It's not in fact who we are as humans.  We don't have to shrug our shoulders in a spirit of resignation.  We can do something about it.

Two, practice compassion.  Recent neuroscience studies suggest that positive emotions are less heritable—that is, less determined by our DNA—than the negative emotions. Other studies indicate that the brain structures involved in positive emotions like compassion are more "plastic"—subject to changes brought about by environmental input. So, as Dr. Keltner observes, "we might think about compassion as a biologically based skill or virtue, but not one that we either have or don't have. Instead, it's a trait that we can develop in an appropriate context."

This is why all of the major religious traditions in the world see compassion as a spiritual practice.  And each tradition has developed ways to practice this trait.  And here again, the latest neurobiological research shows that our bodies have a built in system to facilitate this practice.

For example, helping others triggers activity in the  portions of the brain that turn on when people receive rewards or experience pleasure.  Every compassionate act causes a pleasurable physiological response.  In addition, behaviors associated with compassionate love—warm smiles, friendly hand gestures, affirmative forward leans—actually produce more oxytocin in the body which is the hormone that promotes feelings of warmth and connection to others. This suggests compassion may be self-perpetuating: being compassionate causes a chemical reaction in the body that motivates us to be even more compassionate.  So the more we practice acts of kindness and compassion to others, the more we are rewarded for it and the easier the skill becomes.  Transformational spirituality is a practice, a discipline, a developing of ourselves into who we were designed to become.

Three, develop mindfulness.  As Mr. Tale-Yax's tragic story indicates, people are often so caught up in their own lives (for whatever reasons) that they don't notice or pay attention.  I've seen this in myself at times:  I'm walking along the city streets often caught up in my own internal world of thoughts, planning, projections, inner conversations, trying to get some place in a hurry, that I really am missing most of what's around me.  If someone would suddenly stop me and quiz me about what I had seen in the last 10 minutes, I would stutter and stammer somewhat incoherently (except about the details of my inner conversations).

One of the key spiritual practices that so many traditions suggest is mindfulness - the ability to step into the present moment - to be truly aware and conscious right now.  This, too, is a skill that needs to be cultivated.  Try walking somewhere and paying attention to what's around you - what do you hear, see, smell, feel?  Try more meditation at home - spend time sitting and becoming more aware of your self, your heart, your body.  Widen that attention to what's around you.  Really notice.

Four, use empathy.  Hugo's brother Roland made the painful observation that if people would simply recognize that the suffering person could be a member of their own family, they would probably respond differently - be more proactive with their compassion.  He's describing the use of empathy.  The power of empathy is the choice to put ourselves in other people's shoes, to enter their space for a moment, in order to try to understand what they're going through.  It's often begins by asking ourselves the simple question, How would I feel - what would I want - if I were in that situation right now?  But then it always goes beyond to the next question, What is that person feeling or really wanting or needing?  Though our personal responses might differ from that suffering person's, research indicates that the choice to enter into empathy actually helps to motivate altruistic behavior.

Four tangible and siumple ways to overcoming indifference and stepping into compassion.  I'm not completely sure how I would have responded last Monday evening had I been walking along the sidewalk where Huge Alfredo Tale-Yux lay dying.  I would hope I would've at least stopped to see if he was alright.  I really hope I would've also gone beyond that simple step and gotten whatever help I could for him to save his life.  Imagine living in a world where people practiced compassion so often that they became really adept at it - a world where indifference was an anomaly rather than the rule.  It's time to unleash the powerful biology of our lives and let our true wiring go wild.  For the Hugo Alfredo's of the world.