Are you someone who sits in the front row at conferences? Are you someone who will ASK that burning question or give the answer if you have it? Maybe you’re the person who has great ideas for your workplace or community group and just can’t seem to get them across. Maybe you’ve never even told anyone?
Well today is your lucky day.
Asking questions when I needed answers or putting across an idea came easily for me, until something happened. That happens to most of us, I think. For me the ‘what happened’ was a big fat beacon in my personal history. I was attending an event with Australia’s youngest ever senator. He was doing a speaking tour and was in my home town. My parents took us along. When the speaker spoke about what he wanted to be when he grew up he asked a rhetorical question about what WE {the audience} wanted to be.
So I answered him.
I want to be Prime Minister, I said.
He smiled, nodded and with a huge amount of kindness said, great. I love that. But the others in the room laughed. I get now that they were probably laughing at me answering a question that hadn’t required answering. They laughed because determined little old me sounded so certain. But I thought they were laughing AT me. Like, I was stupid at me.
I decided then that there was no way that I would ever speak out for myself. I would never answer questions first. I would wait and see. And a lifetime of behaviour was started. I answered questions after someone else had had a gi and failed. I asked questions one on one or not at all. I did not drawn attention to my opinion just in case it made me look stupid.
You probably have a similar version of things in your life somewhere. Do you think? So how did I get over it? Well, I didn’t really, not entirely. It helps to get that the adults in that room probably weren’t laughing AT me. There probably wasn’t a single one of them that thought what a stupid little girl. And there’s a freedom in that, in knowing that maybe my 8 year old self didn’t get the assessment of the situation right.
So now, I take that oh my gawd what if they think I’m stupid and I do it anyway! And today, your challenge is to do the same. Choose one thing that you’ve been waiting to do or say and make it your mission to say it today.
Daily Challenge: Choose a task for you to ‘stand up’ and if it can be done today, do it! Let us know how you go, don’t leave us hanging.
Chief Blogger at Suger Coat It; An Australian lifestyle blog for women who work for themselves. Melissa is a social media consultant & lover of stripes. Most weekends you’ll find her at the beach or home on the veranda kicking back. Around here, they call her Suger. Feel free to do the same.
