The fear you have of speaking up and being heard by others is destroying your self-confidence and preventing you from living a life that is free from the opinions other people have of you.
By not speaking up and sharing your knowledge and opinions with others, you are in fact accepting and supporting the belief that you have nothing valuable to share and that is simply not true. You have a lot of things to share and there are a lot of people who want to hear what you have to say.
In a class situation, the opinion or question you share, could very well be something that your teacher/lecturer was hoping you’d bring up because it’s important to succeeding in the subject/course you are studying.
In the working world, only the people who are willing to speak up and share their ideas, make it to the top. They get the attention and trust of their employers and clients because by speaking up, they show that they are:
- Confident
- Independent thinkers
- Willing to take risks and learn from them
Here’s what you need to start doing today to overcome your fear
1. Stop imagining what people are going to say about you. You are not supposed to be in their heads. Stay in yours. Whatever it is you imagine other people will say about you, is probably wrong. Trust me on this one.
2. Look for facts and stop relying on fiction to feed your fears. You have no proof that people will say bad things about you when you speak up.
3. You will survive. Remember all the times you spoke up and something bad happened, did you survive that? Then believe you can survive this too.
4. Practice builds confidence. Speak up in situations where you wouldn’t normally. Practice sharing your opinion with others and see what happens. If you don’t die from it, keep doing it.
And most importantly, people who speak up are most likely to take action to get the job done. Action creates results and positive results lead to success.
It’s that simple.
