242. The cost of staying quiet
Are you nervous to speak up and use your voice?
The cost of staying quiet is far greater than the risk of speaking up.
In this episode, the finale of the season, I take you through the 4 big bad costs of staying quiet:
1. It's bad for your mental and physical health.
2. It's a brick wall in your career.
3. It can sabotage the success of your children.
4. Perhaps worst of all, staying quiet can lump you with a death bed regret.
Transcript
Welcome to the season finale of That Voice Podcast.
If you’ve been listening for a while you’ll know every 20 episodes or so I take 4 weeks off. It’s a good chance to refresh a few things, and a good chance for you to catch up on any episodes you missed.
I’m writing a book at the moment called VOICEPRINT – How to leave a lasting impression every time you speak, so that’s taking a lot of my energy and focus at the moment. I cannot wait to get this in your hands.
We’re also full steam ahead for Soul Speakers my online group program and also Soul Speakers Advanced which is my application only high level 12 month program. If you want to become visible and AUDIBLE in your field then Soul Speakers is for you.
And remember my April special to celebrate world voice day which was on the 16th, I’m offering a free 45 min 1:1 for anyone who joins Soul Speakers this month. You can join for 6 months or 12 months – either option the 1:1 is all yours.
And I can help you prepare for an upcoming presentation, I can teach you how to introduce yourself, we can work at shifting an energetic voice block, which you can feel, but don’t know how to clear. I can help you with that.
I’ve also announced dates for my Speak Up for Your Business workshops in London and Perth – so if you’re in either of those cities, jump into the link and be there! My Brisbane workshop in May is all sold out. Seats are limited at these so don’t wait to secure it.
For this final episode of the season.
I want you to consider the cost of staying quiet.
My mum is a flight attendant and she told me this story the other day about how there was a leaky water bottle in a bag in the overhead lockers. It’s a big problem – and often the water bottle wets everything and sometimes even pours out on someone’s head!
Anyway, you’ve been warned. Don’t leave water bottles in your carry on luggage.
So before takeoff mum found this bag with the leaking water bottle and held it up and said, ‘who owns this bag?’
Anyone, who’s bag is this?
Nobody owns up to it.
And mum’s like there’s a leaking water bottle.
Ok if no one owns it it’s being offloaded and left behind.
And still no one said anything.
Now of course it was somebody’s bag.
But either they were so engrossed in their headphones they didn’t hear or see.
Or they had such a fear of speaking up and people looking at them that they preferred to have their belongings left behind.
Now this might sound like an unbelievable scenario, but it’s not. The fear of speaking up and being seen and being looked at runs so deep. Also the fear of being reprimanded. Mum can be a bit scary. The scenario could’ve triggered a deep patten around fear of getting in trouble often associated with speaking up.
Be quiet, head down, fly under the radar and you’ll be safe.
Many people have this deep conditioning.
And many people will be able to go through life staying quiet, head down, not drawing attention and staying safe.
But at what cost?
I want to share 4 big bad costs with you today.
The first being your health.
Staying quiet and not using your voice is bad for your physical and mental health.
Holding in your thoughts, feelings and not speaking your truth activates a stress response in the body. Over time this will lead to burnout or worse.
One study had linked emotional suppression to heart disease.
Because what you’re not saying is still being felt.
You might have read The Body Keeps the Score or heard the phrase Issues live in the tissues.
The more you express your true self and clear emotions through the channel of your voice the healthier you’ll feel.
So many of my clients say god that feels good to say. When I’ve helped them put together a keynote or social media content. Yes, it’s about the service to the audience, but it’s also about the service to self. Using your voice is cathartic. There is physiological and psychological release in expressing yourself through voice.
Have you ever had the feeling of a lump in your throat, or a weight on your chest that has cleared or lifted when you’ve said it out aloud?
The cost of staying quiet over a lifetime – wow. That weight is being lugged around in everything you do and everyone you meet.
My clients often describe feeling lighter after working with me. And that’s because we cleared that sludge of silence.
The number 2 cost of staying quiet is the brick wall it puts up in your career.
If you’re not confidently expressing yourself it will 100 per cent affect your chances of getting leadership positions. And women are more likely to stay quiet to avoid conflict, appear to be nice, they’re more likely to get interrupted in meetings, less likely to asset themselves and this leads to women being overlooked, underpaid and underestimated and this really pisses me off.
It’s good I’m in this line of work where I can change these statistics.
Now if you have your own business the stakes are even higher here. You don’t have bosses and colleagues who’ll advocate for you and your product or service, at least in the beginning. YOU need to speak up for your business (that’s why I call my workshops this). YOU need to show up and speak up confidently if you expect to buy into what you’re selling.
This is where the cost of staying quiet is monetary.
Excellent communicators, confident speakers get higher paid jobs and make more money in their business.
The cost of staying quiet could mean at best settling for your lifestyle and at worst struggling.
And while I’ve got you down here in the pit of pain.
If you’re a parent or an aunty or uncle – the kids are not listening to what you say they are watching what you do.
That’s the third big cost of staying quiet. It negatively impacts future generations.
You have the power to break the speaking cycle of your family.
Because if you are conditioned to stay quiet and pipe down chances are so did your mother and so did your grandmother and unless you start using your voice, then that cycle of silence will be passed down to your children.
Communication is currency. And the cost of staying quiet is expensive Much more expensive than working with a voice coach.
So what vocal legacy are you passing down?
And perhaps worst of all, the cost of staying quiet could mean you live and die with regret.
Bronnie Ware in her book The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying found number 3 was I wish I had the courage to express myself.
That’s from people lucky enough to have a death bed to contemplate life on.
You will regret the things you didn’t say not the things you did.
And the longer you silence yourself, the harder it become to even know what you think, want or believe. Because it’s through using our voice we find clarity of our message.
There is a huge cost to staying quiet. I totally understand there are circumstances where there is a cost to speaking up.
But for this episode contemplate for you, what is the cost of staying quiet?
How could you life be different if you spoke up freely?
Could you easily own up to a leaky bag on a plane and know no one around you gives a shit.
Or do you hold a story about how dangerous it is to speak up, so better to stay quiet?
What’s staying quiet costing you?
We know it’s bad for your health.
It can put a brick wall up in your career.
Staying quiet can sabotage the success of your children.
And perhaps worst of all, staying quiet can lump you with a death bed regret.
I know this episode was quite dark. You have a 4 week break to mull it over.
But it is why I do what I do and dedicate my life to helping people love their voice and speak with confidence.
Because I see the ruts it gets people out of, the success they have, the money they make and the lightness in their whole being that comes from releasing the burden of staying quiet and embracing the joy of speaking up.