Find your voice and be heard
Who hasn’t looked back on a conversation and thought ‘if only I’d said…’? Anita Chaudhuri explores what holds us back from stating our truth, and discovers ways to communicate calmly and effectively
The other day, I found myself in an uncomfortable situation. I wanted to address someone’s behaviour, but found it challenging. The person is the leader of a group I belong to and uses his position to make catty comments under the guise of ‘banter’. ‘Someone needs to have a word with him,’ I fumed to a fellow group member. As long as that someone wasn’t me…
Hold my tongue
Why is speaking up so daunting? I am no shrinking violet, yet I agonise over turning down an invitation or questioning a decision with which I don’t agree. Often, I find it easier to put up and shut up – after all, no one else seems to have a problem with this guy. ‘It’s just his sense of humour,’ said my friend after he belittled someone, but it didn’t feel like a joke to me.
‘It can feel safer to stay quiet and not rock the boat,’ agrees Chloe Brotheridge, author of The Confidence Solution (Penguin, £9.99). ‘So much of it comes down to conditioning. At work, for instance, if a man speaks his mind, he’s a good leader but, when a woman does it, she’s seen as bitchy or bossy.’
There’s a beautiful quote in Brotheridge’s book by author Debbie Ford, renowned for her work on the shadow self: ‘The greatest act of courage is to be and to own all of who you are – without apology, without excuses, without masks to cover the truth of who you are.’ In any situation where we are required to speak up, this gets to the root of our deepest fear – that we will be seen by others and judged harshly for it.
The temptation is to hide by avoiding speaking up or copying the style and opinions of others when we do speak. Brotheridge points out that there’s a tendency to disown the parts of ourselves that we don’t like. ‘But the downside of filtering yourself – editing yourself down to a socially acceptable self – is that you filter out the good as well as the bad. That doesn’t leave much room for authenticity.’
When we are required to speak up, this gets to the root of our deepest fear – that we will be seen by others and judged for it
Who dares wins
Surprisingly, Brotheridge believes confidence is overrated. ‘Bravery is more important, and you can take small, constructive steps to practise being braver. Every time we challenge ourselves in a small way, our nervous system may respond with fear but, when we survive that experience, something within us exhales. An inner voice says: ‘Ah, this is OK. Maybe it’s safe for me to speak up! Even if I did say the wrong thing, maybe it’s not as bad as I thought it might be.’ Bravery gives you confidence.’
Unpacking where our fear of speaking up came from can be the first step in creating lasting