DJ Zinhle and her co-author, self-leadership coach and facilitator Nokubonga Mbanga, chat to us about their new self-help book Meeting Your Power and the inspiration behind it. By Kwanele Mathebula
1. Zinhle – The inspiration behind the book was the experience with the television show Nokubonga and I worked on called It Takes a Village. The show was aimed at improving the lives of young women (in Kwa Zulu-Natal) struggling with social issues such as unemployment, alcohol and drug and teenage pregnancy. I receive a large number of questions from women who are looking for advice about how they can heal or empower themselves and I couldn’t answer these questions individually anymore. We decided to continue the work of empowering women by sharing some of our personal experiences, how we overcame them and the lessons we learnt through a book.
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2. Nokubonga – Writing and publishing the book was an 18-month process. We met regularly to discuss the concept for the book. We discussed each chapter, the angles we would tackle based on our personal experiences and the messages we wanted to convey through our stories. We had a few creative differences and resolved them by being open to learning the value of the different opinions and how they impacted the end goal. We chose to make it a self-help book because we realized that the significant shifts that took place in our lives were a result of building ourselves regularly. Change came from the hard questions we asked ourselves and actions we took to participate progressively in our lives. That is the message we want to resonate throughout the book.
3. Zinhle – My hope is that this book will encourage women to have positive relationships with themselves. I hope that people who read this book will want to keep reading it over and over again because of how inspired they feel afterwards. I hope that it will make them excited about loving themselves fully and help them meet their power.
4. Writing this book has helped us grow in ways we didn’t expect.
DJ Zinhle – The process of writing this book made me realize how much I have learnt over the past three years. I have also noted how much I still have to do to meet my own power. It’s a full-time commitment to be fully present in your greatness and I’m not even half way there, the journey continues.
Nokubonga – I am used to writing blogs that are usually two pages long, but writing the book was completely new to me. It’s a challenge that has stretched my growth and I am forever grateful.
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5. Nokubonga – We want to grow this brand beyond books. We are planning more projects that will create a Meeting your Power culture through various platforms.
