Voice isn’t only about what you sound like and what you say; it’s also about how you deliver it. As Rebecca Solnit describes it, a writer’s voice is “something of the personality and the principles of the writer, where your humor and seriousness are located, what you believe in, why you write, who and what you write about, and who you write for.”
“People think you want them to do something or say something special...you don't. You just want them to be themselves, so you can be yourself.”
-John Lennon
“It seems to me,” the puppeteer Jim Henson (The Muppets, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, etc.) said, “that each of us expressing our own originality is the essence of our art and professionalism.” Don’t hide it. Embrace it. Express it. Manifest it through your discipline. Say it out loud
‘Do not try to be the best. Be the only.’ It helps me believe in a positive-sum world—where my success does not hinge on the failure of others, and I am not in a rat-race.” — Nishant Jain
instead of asking:
how can i be more like them?
ask:
how can i be more like me?
how many versions of me do i occupy? where do they live? how do they grow? what will they bloom into? what rituals do they practice? how do they show care to others? what are they afraid of? what do they dream about at night?