not be afraid to speak up when i have an answer/idea/opinion

So I was able to pipe up a bit more with my friend and crush this weekend. I voiced my opinion that I think he needs to come back to Portland. He’s being a tease right now but I think my honesty about how I feel, actually feels freeing and helps me not feel like I’m pretending to be one way when I’m really another. (A problem I dealt with a lot in my teen years.) It seems to be yielding good results.

http://www.43things.com/entries/view/3999002

I tend to enjoy reading everyone’s things lists. It is interesting to see what everyone wants to accomplish.

So when I stumbled across this particular goal, it just struck me as “I so need to accomplish this.”

I need to speak up a lot more than I do. I need to take chances and listen to my gut and be willing to be wrong sometimes, but at least show that I do think, have opinions and am not just a meek little mouse in the corner.

At the same time, I want to master the art of tactfully and respectfully sharing my thoughts and ideas. I think it’s great to get my point acrossed, but even better when I can present it in such a way that others don’t feel threatened, don’t see arrogance in my demeanor and feel welcome to accept or challenge my views and thoughts.

This will be a good goal to prick my thoughts and remind me regularly to speak up and share.

Yep, this is going better than ever – I had a marvellous day on Thursday – ignored the niggling fear that my ideas were possibly daft (even though I really felt they were worth considering and had done the background work) and spoke up. Good for me! In a way this has freed up my thinking, I am not being so hard on myself and critical of my ideas and have more faith in speaking up when it counts.

This goal has been going quite well I think. I’ve started voicing my opinion more regularly over little things and I’ve noticed that the world doesn’t stop when I say something more radical than usual. In fact quite the opposite – I have had some great conversations as a result and feel better for having expressed myself.

Think that this is an on-going goal – but so far, so good!

i say things i don’t mean. and i sound really mean. sometimes having an opinion means putting yourself out there and sounding reeaaally stupid. for me anyway.

but i’m glad to have found my voice. at least now i know that there are some things that i will not stand for. and that i feel strong enough about them to speak up and speak out.

baby steps. :)

I have got loads of confidence its just when I was a little kid I got bullied for not speaking up and its ironic that Im afraid of speaking up when the reason I got trashed by some one else was beacuse I was a shy girl who couldnt voice her views – the most I could do when I was a kid was nod or shrug. Im not like that now but I dont feel secure in a big group saying what I think with people like the person she was.
It feels like its deeprooted, I can only talk to others with confidence when they are showing an intrest in me or if they talk first! I hate public speaking, I gabble and I get really touchy when I get called a shy kid beacuse inside I feel so confident but I just dont know how to show it.
Please help!

I haven’t been afraid for a little while now, and so I’m taking it off my list. I will rememeber to do this I’m not done with this, but I have done it.(I’m going to keep doing it.)

Quit a job yesterday. I had a large number of reasons I could cite.. and had cited, numerous times in my head (and to my friend, P, who also works for him) but when it came down to it, all I could say that it was the sheer responsibilty of basically making sure that the business continues to function that had been thrust upon my cowardly shoulders and that it was all too much too balance with my current student-like status.

I didn’t bring up the fact that I was tired of the way he treated me with the constant guilt-trips, lies and his general frickin’ jerk-like ways.

I feel like if I had made him aware that he was a large part of the reason I was quitting.. like, he could learn from it in order to keep his future employees for longer periods of time.

But I couldn’t. XD; I just can’t do something like that. Not yet.

This is one of the most liberaty things anyone can do. this is a type of freedom that every single person on the planet can experiance and enjoy and if you want to die happy, it is def on of those things you have to do in life, even if only for a day