🕙Free Speak: Find Your Voice, Trust Your Gut, and Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Tunde Oyeneyin (Author, Narrator),
Speak: Find Your Voice, Trust Your Gut, and Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Tunde Oyeneyin (Author, Narrator),
From Tunde Oyeneyin, the massively popular Peloton instructor, fitness star, and founder of SPEAK, comes an empowering, inspiring book that shows how she transformed grief, setbacks, and flaws into growth, self-confidence, and triumph—for fans of Brené Brown and Glennon Doyle. On any given day, thousands of devoted people clip into their bikes and have their lives changed by Tunde Oyeneyin. From her platform in a Peloton studio, she encourages riders with her trademark blend of positivity, empathy, and motivational “Tunde-isms,” to push themselves to their limits both on and off the bike. Now, fans and listeners everywhere can learn about her personal journey, and discover how they too can “live a life of purpose, on purpose” with Speak , a memoir-manifesto-guide to life inspired by her immensely popular Instagram Live series of the same name. Taking us through each step of the SPEAK acronym—Surrender, Power, Empathy, Authenticity, and Knowledge—Oyeneyin shares the lessons she has learned about loss, love, body image, and how she has successfully created an intentional, joyful life for herself, offering an accessible blueprint for anyone looking to make a positive change in their lives. Read more
This book has 12 main chapters, and about 214 pages. In the Introduction, Oyeneyin recalls the moment she had an epiphany about what she wanted to do in life. She saw her goal of teaching others to ride, and pursued it. She explains her acronym S.P.E.A.K. : Surrender, Power, Empathy, Authenticity, Knowledge; and what those five pillars mean to her. Each of the chapters in the book are related to one of Oyeneyin's five pillars. For example Chapter 1 – The Perfect Dress is highlighted as an “Authenticity” chapter. Here she discusses a few events in her life related to body image and being yourself. Chapter 2 – A Life of Purpose is an “Empathy” chapter, where Oyeneyin recalls some early jobs working at a make-up counter and bonding with her customers. It is not all happy memories however, as in the next chapter she discusses the painful tragedy of losing her younger brother at age 19. In each chapter, as Oyeneyin recounts events from her life (which is full of uncommon situations and lucky coincidences), she uses her stories to illustrate a bit of wisdom about how to live a purposeful and fulfilling life. Even though her path might be very different from yours, there are certain ideas and concepts that can apply no matter what your goals are. Overall I mostly enjoyed reading this book. Many of the life lessons that Oyeneyin shares seem to be filled with wisdom and sound advice, even if some of them might be more obvious than others. The book feels like more memoir and less instruction manual, so if you are aware of that in advance it shouldn't be disappointing. You don't have to be a fan of hers (or even know who she is at all), to appreciate some of her “Tunde-isms”. Even if you don't find the advice very helpful, it is at least somewhat entertaining to read part of her remarkable life story.
