Is Your Silence Costing You Your Life?

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”- Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King was right on when he said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” It is the beginning of the end.

A major source of stress is caused by unspoken feelings, not getting what we want, and not asking for what we want. This stress can cause headaches, insomnia, emotional eating, avoidance, depression, and laryngitis just to name a few. I, myself, have experienced all of the tell tale signs at one time or another in my life.

So, back to the question, is your silence causing you stress? A good question to ask yourself is your life working or not working for you? A good place to start looking for answers is to take a good long look at your relationship with yourself and others.

• How many times do you say YES when you want to say NO? For fear that they may not like you. You valued the other person more than you valued yourself.
• How many times have you kept quiet because you were afraid to speak up? For fear of what might happen or not sure of yourself. So, you just sucked it up and paid for it on the inside.
• How many times have you spoke your feelings, but did not ask for what you wanted? For fear that you didn’t know how to ask or felt you weren’t worthy enough. So, you came away unfulfilled and sometimes even resentful for not having spoken up and stated what you really wanted.
• How many times have you let others dictate the course of your life because you didn’t think you knew enough? So, you lived the life they wanted, not yours, simply because you wanted to please them.
• How many times have you settled for less when you could have had more? What do you think doing this did to your sense of self worth?

Think about it. When you become silent, don’t express your feelings, and don’t speak up, you give away your power and your soul. Now, if this only happened one time it may not be a problem. You learn from the experience and you take care of better care of yourself next time. However, keeping silent time after time causes a slow demise of the quality of your life, not to mention your integrity, dignity, joy, passion, and prosperity in your life. How long are you going to keep saying ‘Ow!’ before you stop!’

So how do you reclaim your power?

The first step is to be accountable. You are where you are because of the choices you have made in your life. Now don’t go south on me and start beating yourself up more. It’s not bad or wrong, it’s just where you were at the time. Now is the time to make better choices for yourself – stand up for yourself.

The second step is to take a look at the areas of your life where you’ve sabotaged yourself. Determine what it is that you want and start putting in corrections. In other words, start taking different actions than the ones you took before. And every time you take a new empowered action, you begin to reclaim your power little by little.

Being silent does have its place in everyone’s life, but staying silent when you really need to be standing up and showing up for yourself serves nobody well, least of all you.

If you’re really having problems stating what you want, just remember the old saying, ‘How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.’ In short, open your mouth and clearly state what you want - one word at a time.