Voice Your Heart: You Owe It to Yourself

By Lolly Daskal

In today’s workplace, there are many people who think that the best way to advance in the work place is to be agreeable.

"So many of us have swallowed our own voice for so long that we have forgotten what truth tastes like." 

Listen to your heart's voice

We are afraid to use our heart’s voice because:

We are afraid of being reprimanded. When we’re wrapped up in pleasing others, the idea that we will hear something harsh in return keeps us from speaking up.

We are afraid of rejection. The fear of rejection causes us to shy away from the risk of making waves, even when we realize trying to maintain the status quo is ultimately a losing proposition.

We are afraid of conflict. When we fear conflict, we avoid it at all cost - even at the price of our soul.  We tend to align ourselves only with those who think and believe as we do in order to avoid conflict. We think we are playing it safe, but are we?

We are afraid of being rude. But is it rude when we express ourselves, when we give our opinion? What an excellent thing to be as rude as that with our convictions.

We are afraid of being alienated. Nobody wants to be on on the outskirts, but when we don’t speak up we alienate ourselves from ourselves.

We are afraid of hurting people’s feelings. Empathy is a virtue, but when we’re overly empathetic we can lose our sense of self.

We are afraid of losing the approval of others. Many of us are people pleasers and want to please others at the expense of our own respect. It’s a basic human characteristic to want respect and acceptance.

There are many reasons why we don’t speak up or speak out.  But there is only one reason to speak from the heart.

The voice of the heart stems from our convictions. It allows others to see the character of who you are.

The mind is rational. It says that if we speak out we will be in trouble; if we state what we think there will be consequences.

The best insurance we can take out on our leadership is to invest in the message of our words, by voicing our heart.

We owe it to ourselves not to be afraid of our voice. It is not there to be silent.

It there to let us know that we have something worthwhile to say.

In our efforts to protect ourselves from pain, from fear, from sadness, from discomfort, from failure, from the parts of our life we have been conditioned to believe are dangerous or dark, we have stopped voicing our truth.

"The masks we wear to protect ourselves are armors, but they don’t really protect us— they just numb us."

Voice your heart- you owe it to yourself not to be anesthetized, the truth isn’t always beauty, but the desire for it is.

Lead From Within:. Life is too precious to waste our time on not voicing our heart. Speak up today. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

Lolly Daskal is the president and founder of Lead From Within a coaching and consultant firm that manages large scale corporate coaching and custom made leadership programs.

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