“I want you to think about something…..silence is acceptance. In other words, whatever you remain silent about in your life, you’ve accepted as being OK”. I vividly remember the first time I heard that statement and the impact it had on me. I was participating in a company training and our facilitator threw that out there as something to consider. I was floored. I’d never really thought about the consequences that being silent had created in my life. Where had I been silent and what was the cost of that silence to me and my relationships? The more I examined that question the more powerful the statement became to me.
As I thought about what he said, I realized that sometimes silence has little to no consequence, but often times silence has a big consequence. Perhaps the most significant consequence is resentment and anger, because in my experience, whatever we remain silent about will almost always turn to resentment or anger. Over time, that resentment and that anger destroys friendships, marriages, families, careers, and human beings.
The reason it destroys those things is because carrying resentment and anger around diminishes or completely drains us of our energy, our personal power, our vitality and our loving essence. Stripped of these attributes, our ability to produce meaningful results in our life is greatly compromised.
The underlying cause of our silence is almost always the same thing…..fear…..of failure or fear of loss (your job, your friendship, your marriage) or most commonly the fear of not being good enough. So instead of saying what’s so for us, we shrink, because we wouldn’t want to risk looking bad, or saying the wrong thing, or upsetting someone.
We choose to keep the upset inside ourselves where it does the most damage.
And so we sit in our silence allowing situations to occur in our lives that do not support us being happy and fulfilled. Said more succinctly, our silence turns us into giant victims. And the longer we remain silent about almost anything in our life, the more steeped into the victim mindset we become.
As I look back on my life I can really see the effect this pattern of behavior has had on my relationships, my performance and my sense of self. In fact, you can draw a straight line from the moments in my life where I had a choice to speak up or remain silent about something that was affecting me and the 100% correlation that choice had on my sense of happiness.
When I chose to speak up my sense of self rose as did my sense of happiness; where I remained silent, my sense of self became diminished as did my happiness. Do you see a similar correlation in your life?
I want to be clear, there is nothing wrong with being silent about anything in your life. However, I would like you to consider that if you remain silent, you then forfeit the right to bitch or complain about what’s occurring that you do not like. Have you done this…bitch or complain about something that is occurring in your life that you have remained silent around? Maybe it’s with your boss, or your spouse, or a friend. They are treating you in a way that doesn’t work for you but all you choose to do is complain about the unfairness of what’s occurring, or the wrongness of what’s occurring, instead of taking an action that would change your circumstances. I really get how difficult it can be to speak your mind. I’ve certainly shied away from doing so many times, always with the same outcome….anger and resentment. And many times that resentment is directed inwardly. I resent myself for not having the courage to take a stand for myself by speaking my mind. Does this ring true for you as well?
I want to have an amazing life, and in my experience, one of the fastest routes to creating that possibility is to say what’s so for me….to speak my truth. If I remain silent, I forfeit my power, usually to the one person on the planet I’d least like to have it in this moment. I’ve allowed my spirit to be hijacked by fear.
Where in your life can you take back your power and renew your spirit by courageously speaking your truth?
Would you be willing to start today?
With whom?
By when?
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