Your original medicine and the vision

I am reading Gail Larsen’s book, Transformational Speaking; If You Want to Change the World, Tell a Better Story. Gail’s thesis is if you want to be a speaker who transforms others you need to get in touch with who you are and convey that person to your listeners. This, she states, is more important than your technical skills in gaining trust and credibility as a speaker. Trust and credibility are necessary if you are to transform those who hear you.

The first of her six principles is “You are an original, nowhere else duplicated.” She goers on to explain that indigenous cultures have a phrase, “original medicine.” One’s original medicine is one’s natural attributes and abilities. It is important to discover your original medicine, she writes, because if you don’t you won’t be able to express your personal knowledge, strength and understanding.

For those of you who have been following my blog you will immediately, as I did, see the connection between original medicine with the vision.

Two things in particular about this concept of original medicine resonated with me. The first one, something I had never thought about as I wrote about the vision, is that we may not be aware of our original medicine, our special gifts, or may even devalue them, because our gifts come naturally to us, they are who we are. What comes naturally to us is effortless, so we might think our talents are not particularly special. (Maybe also because we don’t think we are particularly special?)

I can relate to this. Notwithstanding comments from others to the contrary, I have occasional doubts about my ability as a writer and a speaker. I sometimes even wonder if I have anything special to say. Rather than getting hung up in this emotional quagmire, I let my intellect take over, my rational side, tell myself that I have indeed been given gifts, and just keep plugging away.

The second point she raises is one that I have thought about, that we need to be true to ourselves, our own original medicine, rather than emulating someone else. This is not only true for me as a speaker, but also true for you regardless of what aspect of your life your vision relates. The point is not to be just like someone you admire, but rather to be just like you, the real you that you will start to manifest as you become aware of your vision.

Because so much of your motivation and your success in life is related to discovering and manifesting the true you, whether you call it your original medicine or your vision, it’s extremely important you spend the time necessary to discover it.

In my next blog I will write about some strategies you can use to help you discover this special part of you.