It's Time to Speak Up

Alright.

Last week I told you to shut up.

Now I’m telling you to speak up.

Contradiction? I know.

Hear me out.

I’m writing this with the assumption that you took last week’s assignment seriously. You stepped away from the noise. You stopped collecting everybody else’s opinions long enough to hear your own thoughts.

And if you did that, the conversation probably sounds a little different now.
Because once you stop asking everybody else what you should do, you have to start dealing with the person who has been sitting quietly underneath all that noise.

You.

And that conversation can get uncomfortable.

The old you is going to attempt to shut this upcoming version of you down because what you’re considering is risky.

There are zero guarantees.

And the old/current version of you is probably more afraid than a pack of zebras passing a lion’s den.
😂

Now you’re faced with a choice.

What’s it gonna be?

Do you let the old version of you win and choose the comfortable way through life?

Or will you stop chickening out, finally speak up, and choose the unknown path that has always tugged at you?

Because here’s the confusing part.

One version of you is certain.

And you may be thinking, Well, if I’m certain, this must be the best decision.
Meanwhile, the other version is as uncertain as tomorrow’s gas prices.

But there’s an invisible tug that won’t stop pulling you.

You see the signs.

You feel the pull.

You keep coming back to the same idea.

And still, you hesitate.

There’s actually a reason this happens.

Your brain has a strong tendency to favor what’s familiar. Psychologists refer to part of this as status quo bias. The existing situation can feel preferable simply because it’s known, even when you aren’t particularly happy with it.

Sidenote: Your brain can be your biggest op or your loudest cheerleader. It truly depends on your awareness.

Then there’s loss aversion.

The possibility of losing what you already have can carry more psychological weight than the possibility of gaining something better.

So the old version of you has a pretty convincing argument.

What if this doesn’t work?

What if you fail?

What if you lose what you already have?

What if everyone thinks you’re crazy?

What if you regret it?

Meanwhile, the future version of you is standing there like:

Girl. Are we doing this or not?

And this is where I think speaking up becomes a revolutionary action.

Not because talking is revolutionary.

Because acting on what you know to be true for yourself is.

For me, I’ve had to silence that comfortable version of myself several times by speaking up.

And honestly, the niceties weren’t working.

I had to almost insult the old version of me.
😂

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that method.

It wasn’t exactly the healthiest internal dialogue.

But it worked.

Eventually, I grew beyond needing to fight myself that way.

Now I can speak up for myself through consistent action.

I don’t have to announce every decision.

I don’t have to convince everybody.

I don’t even need to feel confident first.

I can simply make the decision and let my behavior speak.

That’s actually how self-efficacy develops. You build confidence in your ability to handle something by experiencing yourself doing it.

Every time you take an action, navigate the outcome, adjust, and keep going, you give yourself evidence that you can trust yourself.

Which brings us right back to the experiment.
Last week, I asked you to shut up.

This week, I’m asking you to speak up.

Not necessarily to everybody else.

To yourself.

What have you been thinking about doing?

What decision have you been circling?

What keeps tugging at you even though you can’t guarantee the outcome?

What would you do if you stopped requiring certainty before you allowed yourself to begin?

Write it down.

Then choose one action that would make the thought visible in your life.

That’s your experiment.

And if you need a little structure for turning that action into 100 days of evidence, that’s exactly what my 100 Days, One You Challenge was created for.
→ Start your 100-day experiment here.

You don’t need to know exactly where this leads.

You need to be willing to find out.

Because sometimes the loudest thing you can say is what you finally decide to do.

And I want it to work for you.

Don’t take my word for it.

Test it yourself.

Peace Out, Peace In.

-Spivey J.

P.S. Last week I told you to shut up. This week I’m telling you to speak up. Next week…who knows? 😂 That’s kind of the point of the experiment.