When you lose touch with the core voice within you, your relationships will founder.

This is the essential first rule for being an effective leader: listen to your own voice. Learn to listen to and respect your intuition, your logic, your emotion, your opinions, the voice of your spirit and the voice inside you that has always wanted to say: “ ______________.”

Many of us grow up with the idea that our job in life is to make others happy. There is certainly joy in serving others, but that joy does not come until you know yourself and “have” yourself to give. How can you give if you are depleted, without resources and not getting your own needs met? Losing touch with your own voice means you are not being, or becoming, who you were meant to be. This will distort any relationship of which you are a part. “How can I be yours? I am not even mine.” Voltaire has a character say.