“Speak Your Truth”

Uncategorized 4 Minutes

“Speak your truth.” That’s a phrase that has become common in popular culture over the past year. Speaking your truth is the most powerful weapon we have.

This may be you…. At some point in your life you made the decision that it was no longer safe to speak your truth. In your early years, speaking up led to a scolding from your parents, or worse. Their censure caused pain and engendered a belief in you that speaking up would create even more pain. This belief compelled you to withhold and question your voice from then on. Your parents, of course, did the best they could given their challenging upbringing; but whether they knew it or not, they were recreating their painful past—a past where they were to be seen but not heard, and forced to cope with their difficulties and feelings by keeping a tight lip. The cycle repeated itself in how they raised you, and in how they expected you to keep certain parts of yourself invisible. Even if your parents were generally kind and open to you, so long as they held onto their need to withdraw—their coping strategies—they would unintentionally invite you to withdraw as well; you would likely inherit their fears, beliefs and attitudes, like the innocent sponge and mimicker you were.

Barriers

  • Fear of offending. This is rooted in fear that you will break your connection with others. That means fear of loneliness and loss of power — the power to get people to stick around.
  • Not wanting to be judged. It’s fear that if you say what you truly believe, you’re not going to seem competent, credible or lovable. The result is a habit of self-censorship and a lack of confidence in owning your opinions.
  • A sense of futility. “If you’ve found in the past that asserting your opinion made no difference to the powerful people in your life, you may be inclined to think, ‘What’s the use?’ today.”
  • Fear of reprisal. Anxiety about being shunned, ridiculed or attacked can make speaking up feel downright dangerous.

Most of the time you will not speak your truth because you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. That’s natural and oftentimes a good practice depending on the time and circumstance. However, there are times in which you need to put forth your belief for clarification or conviction. If you hurt a person’s feelings, please be patient until they figure out how to respond. Family truths are sometimes the most difficult truths to speak. By speaking your truth, you will frequently piss some people off. Please don’t take their attacks at you personally. It’s really not about you. It’s about them. It is called transference in psychology. A person transfers their emotions to you, accusing you of possessing what they are feeling. It is not necessary to push your truth onto someone else. And it’s not your job to fix anyone.

Speaking your truth will surely piss some people off and that’s a good thing. It’s time now, in your boomer years, to live your life the way you want to – the way you feel – yet always, of course, with reason and kindness. You’ve spent the better part of your life being honest, patient, compassionate and loving. And you will always be that person. On the other hand, holding back your truth when it’s necessary to speak is not going to be healthy for your personal growth and transformation. To speak your truth is to assume that there is some truth that you yourself possess. It assumes that each person is his or her own source for truth and authority.

The Power of speaking your truth. At the moment you start speaking your truth, you become more powerful than you can possibly imagine because when you speak the truth, you start believing in yourself. Of course, everyone thinks they believe in themselves. Everyone should be taught from a young age to be authentic, be you, believe in yourself. Think deeper, clearer and more profoundly ask yourself , Are you really free enough to piss people off? Speaking your truth comes from knowing who you are, from self – knowledge. Once you start practicing how to own your truth, everything in your life will start arranging itself. A huge amount of stress will be lifted from your heart because you don’t have to pretend anymore. You don’t have to hide parts fo you. And there is power in that thinking. When the shields we use to protect ourselves are gone, being present, being open and being emotionally pure and raw start to come to the surface. Being honest demands respect. When you value and respect your own thoughts and feelings, others will too. Those who don’t respect your thoughts and feelings probably shouldn’t be in your life in the first place. You will become stronger. There is strength in being honest with yourself. It is letting those icky feelings that you pretend do not exist out into the light. It requires strength to admit who you are and who you want to be with. It sounds easy but it isn’t. That kind of honesty can be brutal and harsh when you have to look at pieces that are not polished.

Practice Safety First. That is, give yourself a chance to practice sharing your truth. Find a community of supporters who will let you speak what’s on your mind without judgement or shame. Learning to share your voice and speak your truth for the first time will rarely be as eloquent as Oprah. Because of that, be awkward in the privacy and comfort of your own circle or platform. You can say things in a wonky way until they come out right.

Never Give your power away. Your truth is your power, so never give your power away to anyone else for any reason. Sharing your truth takes a leap of faith. However, only then can you learn and know the doing of your purpose. It’s better to live a Hard truth than a Beautiful Lie.


Do you speak your truth? Or do you worry about what other will think? Do you feel that you know yourself better now? Let’s have a conversation.

Published by True Living

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33 thoughts on ““Speak Your Truth””

  2. Parents should be aware of the way they speak to their kids, because eventually the way they speak to them becomes their inner voice. At this stage of my life, I would say I know myself better now but that doesn’t mean I speak my truth all the time, I’m still a work in progress and I know I’ll get there eventually. Thank you for this great article.

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  3. Reblogged this on Coming of Age For Men and commented:
    Wow! The power of truth is in the tongue! The definition of speaking the truth lies in this post! I mean, word can’t express how powerful this post really is. We all should speak the truth and not hold our power back. We can’t care about what people will say about our truth. As long as it is convicted. Thank you for sharing with us why we should speak our truth and own them. Bless you! 😀 \O/

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  4. Realistically most people would speak the truth if they felt they could do so without making the situation worse. If you are comfortable speaking and self confident, you know how to speak without offending someone. Giving feedback and your own opinion is not taught in schools though. But you can learn to be self-confident, and how to give feedback, share your own opinion, and even better you can learn to accept feedback without feeling defensive. Millions have learned it from belonging to Toastmasters Clubs internationally and they have been doing it since 1924.

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    1. I honestly can’t agree with you less on this. You have a fantastic point. The truth is I have been there and I sure know how it feels. A lot of people would feel more comfortable about speaking their truth if the following barriers as stated in my post were tackled. A lot of us restrain cause of fear of hurting others, what they would think of us, or what they would say, these things are a major setbacks from us. But it’s high time we realize that they can’t control us anymore. They shouldn’t stop us from doing what’s right. From doing us and living real and free to ourselves. Cause we’ve had enough as to what the society thinks or feel. It’s high time we take charge and do us for once in our lives. We owe that to ourselves.

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      1. I know I agree with you but there is a time in a relationship/friendship/family for bending also. I have given in to others choices and changed my opinion also.
        I think you speak of control, and you are right, that is completely undesirable.

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  7. I have broken the cycle of people pleasing. Only problem was some of my family (also people pleasers), didn’t like it! Ha! I keep on keeping on. They’ll die one day, but my granddaughters won’t have learned people pleasing from me! ❤️🦋🌀

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    1. People pleasing is really bad. You make yourself unhappy, miserable just to make others happy. I don’t even see the sense in that, sorry to say. How can I always put others first before myself. Everytime. Nah that’s bad. I hope we can all learn that all that matters is us and sometimes we have to stand our grounds and do us. I hope your granddaughters don’t have to learn it. 🤍.

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      1. I think many people have been raised that it is better to give than to receive. As well, to be selfless. But at the expense of not loving themselves and having their needs met (and then they get resentful). My family (on both sides), have struggled with those issues, which is why I believe I am here—to break that cycle. ❤️🦋🌀

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      2. I am so sorry your family had to go through this. The good part of it is you know better now at least so you can put a stop to it. You are more enlightened so you can help yourself and even your family now. It’s never too late. I am rooting for you 🤍😊.

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      4. I am really proud of you. We keep learning everyday . We learn new things everytime. We don’t stop learning and growing. And trying to be the best we can be. Trying to improve on ourselves. 😊.

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  8. Thank you for sharing this, this is very helpful. I’m actually going through a journey that requires me to speak my own truth and not take personal other people’s judgements and criticisms. It takes courage and indeed it’s a leap of faith.

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    1. It’s never easy. Especially when you have to speak your truth. A lot of people would be against you, a lot of people won’t like it, but at some point in our lives we have to stop caring about what others think, especially when we always have to hurt ourselves just to please people. Enough of pleasing people it’s time to think about ourselves for once and be happy with whatever decision we make 😊.

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  10. Thank you very much, my dear friend 🙂

    There is another big barrier: As long as we are not aware of certain things, we are ignorant of them, we are not aware of them, thus we do not know what is true and what is false. with experiences we learn to understand and open new doors to understand the truth. So truth goes along with consciousness. For example we think that certain habits are ok, are true, because millions of others are following them (this kind of practice we can observe in many different fields), then a point may come in our life where we question them, where we put our close attention in it – and suddenly find that this was not the right thing, it was not true (depending on everyone’s own understanding), only then we can be aware of the new attained truth. I call this kind of truth spiritual truth as it has something to do with our own advancing knowledge (Man know thyself…) that is kept under numerous veils.

    Thank you again for this important subject 🙂
    All the best, my friend 🙂
    Didi

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    1. Well written. I couldn’t have agreed less with what you said. Thank you once again for taking your time to read and for the beautiful and most enlightening comment. At least I have a new friend. Thank you Didi my friend.

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