zackariah mimic: Finding Your Voice: Speak Up and Change Your World in 2013 ...

Happy New Year! Over the past five years I have touched on numerous topics that are related to healing the workplace. This blog emerged out of my own experience working in an organization that needed healing on many levels.

One of the challenges that all of us face, at one time or another, is to find ways to initiate positive change so that everyone is treated with respect and treated fairly.

We all have the ability to speak up and bear witness to the injustices that we see, but it is not easy. Speaking up in this way requires that we ?find out voice? and find ways to use it. We all have a voice?some of us are perhaps more quieter than others.

Some?of us are?fortunate enough to live in Canada, which is a democratic country. Living in Canada makes it possible for us to speak up and voice our opinions and offer suggestions. It also means that we can challenge the status quo and take positive action.

Paradoxically finding one?s voice begins with listening. We must listen to our intentions, to our values, to our experience and to our intuition. Perhaps most importantly, we have to listen to other people.

Reflections on finding my voice:

Finding my voice whether I?m writing or speaking has been challenging for me.
Finding my voice means speaking up and defending what I believe in.
Finding my voice means having the courage to speak out against injustices.
Finding my voice means letting who I am emerge on the pages that I am writing.
Finding my voice means being authentic?it means living my values by demonstrating them in my daily actions.
Finding my voice means pushing myself out of my comfort zone.
Finding my voice means not talking so others can talk.
Finding my voice is one of the hardest things I?ve ever had to do.

If we want to change our workplaces, our communities and our world we need to find ?our collective voice. But it really starts with each one of us?one voice at a time.

Happy New Year

Lesley Taylor