Speaking Up Some More!

Isn’t it interesting that this topic gets smacked in my face everywhere I turn. Just when we seem to want to take on an important life lesson that is so long overdue, it’s as if the Universe claps all hands of joy and delivers more opportunities to overcome that lesson than we can seemingly handle.

Just yesterday I told you about the gentleman who tries to speak up with his girlfriend and keeps getting shut down, resulting in both of them being depressed. This only a day after I made the decision that speaking up is really my lesson. Lao Russell is right when she says that “The whole universe is a mirror which reflects back to you that which you first reflect into it.”

Today I received a phone call from a woman who was distressed about having to pay for a pretty expensive electricity bill. She lives in a little cottage behind the main house, which is about four times the size of her little one-bedroom space. The lady in the main house lives there with her husband and she feels that the woman in the tiny cottage should pay half of the electricity bill. No, this was not discussed when she moved in and is not part of the contract.

When I asked her what she was going to do about it she said she knew that she had to speak about it up (here it is again) but she was most likely just going to pay for it to avoid confrontation.

Lesson number one: While we don’t want to be paranoid and live life with a bunch of “what if’s” – we obviously have to cover potential hurdles, especially those that we know are going to come our ways – even if it’s uncomfortable at times. It’s better to clear certain things up ahead of time when the actual obstacle is not before us, this keeps emotions out of the way and prevents ugly weeds of anger getting planted into our beings that later come to rear their evil heads.

Lesson number two: Learn to speak up when you feel you are being treated unfairly, rather than avoiding confrontation. Learning to speak up for yourself is not about being a bully, it’s about loving and respecting yourself. When you start to love and respect yourself you suddenly start carrying yourself a different way, you start walking more upright and people can tell that there is a power surrounding you that they may not be able to explain but they know that there’s something different about you. How would you like it if people didn’t even try to pull a stunt on you like this?

When I asked this woman what she was going to do she said in a “defeated” kind of voice: “I know I’m supposed to speak up about it, I just hate the confrontation.” I asked her: “What if you approached it mathematically by simply talking about the square footage of their house versus your tiny cottage and them being a two-person household versus you being alone?” This made sense to her as it will leave the emotions out of it and she agreed to have “the talk.” What’s exiting about this is not the actual talk, but the fact that she sticks up for herself and sets clear boundaries that are not to be crossed (which is to be taken advantage of). Once she has set these boundaries and she sees them honored her self-esteem, strength and power will soar, which will take her to other heights that she can’t get to until she has overcome those plateaus. It’s the growth that will come from this lesson that is the most exiting part.

Good luck with your own lessons of speaking up for yourself!