speak out more

Tell people to stop littering! Tell people to stop putting there dogs outside when it is cold out!!!!!!!! The list could go on forever!

something I learned from my last placement, I have mostly been able to communicate my point well on placements or in work situations, but unfortunately that was not a possibility at my last clinical placement.

As I’m going on a three day public speaking course in February! How much fun will that be. I’ll be speaking out all over the place and will also get paid by my work to do it!

Do you ever feel at times like you should assert your personality more? I’m quite passive I suppose, there are times in social situations where I just sit back and can’t be bothered and it’s not because I’m a shy retiring type or I have nothing to say, sometimes I simply just can’t be arsed. Not in an anti-social way, but just because I’ve heard it before (I don’t mean this in a conceited way) but I don’t want to expend my energy trying to convince negative people to take a more positive outlook, I’d just rather not respond. As an expample I was at a wedding last weekend and as I was in the toilets I heard a girl sobbing in the cubicle next to me, I tentatively tapped on the door and asked if she was ok, she replied “Yes, I’m just upset that I will never get to have a wedding like this and fall in love” I stood there and thought to myself, well I could try to console this lady and tell her “Oh, don’t be silly, there are plenty of lovely men out there and its just a matter of time, blah, blah” But I didn’t want to, so I just said “Oh dear” and left. That’s a really mean thing for me to do, but I just could be bothered wasting my breath on a drunk womam who probably just needed to be put to bed until her melancholy wore off. I couldn’t say what I really wanted to which was “Oh, get a grip.” as that would be crass and insensitive, but that’s what I thought but couldn’t say.
The thing with being quite passive or too lasy to speak for yourself is that others project upon you things that arn’t really true, i.e. I’ll just sit and be patronised at times by friends and I just can’t be bothered to take issue with it, I just sit and think well, they need to make out that I’m not that clever or the cute one or the quiet one to make themselves feel more confident or astute or witty and I’d rather just stay quiet than speak out. But I suppose it does bother me at times. I rarely speak out about what I’m thinking, I never try to steer conversations around to things I can blurt on about for ages, but I’ll let myself be steered for the sake of others. Am I arrogant in thinking this way? Am I selling myself short? Am I just trying to justify my own inabilities by saying I don’t want to speak out because I can’t be arsed or I feel some sort of charitable patronage of my own for certain friends while subconsciously I don’t speak out because I’m shy? What issues don’t I want to confront? I feel like I’m biting my tongue a lot of the time, but is that just because on the inside I don’t feel what I have to say is woth hearing? or on the other hand am I arrogant and deluded in thinking I indulge friends by remaining silent? I feel guilty either way.