01 May How To Find & Speak Your Voice In Your Relationship
We live in a time and a society when women are much more visible and are being respected as high powered authority professionals.
The likes of Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Clinton, Sonia Gandhi, JK Rowling and Angelina Jolie are all acknowledged as top influential women in the world today.
There is a growing number of businesses with women in leadership positions and female entrepreneurs.
Why, then, are so many women feeling silenced because they’ve lost their “voice” and confidence in expressing themselves in their romantic relationship?
The most common problem I hear from my clients regarding issues in their relationship is: they are not speaking up for themselves.
Why should your professional assertiveness be any different from your relationship assertiveness?
Taking it from the professional angle, often, due to you knowing your Company’s mission, vision and values, you’re able to confidently align your behaviours and actions with them and position yourself assertively and favourably within the business.
The question then is, have you lost your voice and the ability to assert yourself in your relationship because you don’t know your personal mission, vision and values and also those for your relationship?
The answer if often: Yes
And the solution is: FINDING YOUR VOICE AND SPEAKING YOUR VOICE.
Ultimately, finding and developing your voice is about taking responsibility for who you are, your identity, your values, what you care about and the battles that you deem worth fighting in your relationship.
It’s understanding the vision you have for your relationship, the impact you want to have in your relationship, understanding what your partner cares about and what you need to master in order to connect fully with your partner.
You can work all of this out by firstly getting to grips with the concept of “self-talk”, as this is likely to be stopping you from finding and speaking your voice. Self-talk is the internal conversation that you have which serves to point you in one direction or another and it’s not always easy to find.
A lot of the time, this self-talk is negative. Have you found yourself saying any of the following statements?
• I don’t want to make a fuss or cause an argument
• What’s the use? It’ll never change
• I don’t want to be a burden on my partner
• I don’t want to come across as needy
• I’m afraid they’ll reject me if I speak up for myself
• I feel guilty if I say no
If you’ve found yourself saying any of these types of negative self-talk declarations to yourself, you are likely to be feeling helpless, bitterness, guilty, fed-up and generally unhappy.
If you are not speaking up for yourself, being who you truly are or communicating in a healthy and authentic way with your partner, you are not having a voice in your relationships and this causes stress and unhappiness.
Below are a few tips for finding and speaking your voice:
HAVE SOME “QUIET TIME”
Spend 10 minutes sitting down and bringing your attention to your breathing to allow you to connect within. This helps you to know what it is you need and what it is you care about.
PICTURE YOURSELF AS YOU WANT TO BE
See and hear yourself using your authentic voice in situations in your relationship where in the past you did not use your voice and this caused you pain, frustration or even anger.
Picture the situation in the finest of details. Who is there, what you will say, how you are feeling (confident, assertive, empowered, strong) and how you will say it so you are being heard, whilst not being defensive, aggressive or confrontational in your manner.
START WITH SMALL STEPS
Think about the issue or situation you would like to address with your partner and if you’re feeling nervous or anxious, then start off slowly. It’s all about taking small steps. For example, if you would like them to help out more around the home, rather than reel off a list of tasks you would like them to do, decide in your quiet time, the one task you can request of your partner first. You will begin to develop your voice with this one step. As you keep practising, step by step, you will keep developing the muscle of your voice, bringing you into alignment with your authentic self, naturally making you feel better and feel less stress in your relationship.
At some point you have to be willing to make a decision. A decision to care enough about you to have your needs taken care of and to stop the cycle of holding back your voice.
I know this can seem daunting, as you may fear the unknown or fear that you will place the relationship at risk by speaking up. However, I ask you… what is the biggest risk?
1) To put up and shut up by being in a relationship for the sake of being in a relationship, feeling helpless and staying unhappy for years to come? Or
2) Taking the chance to find and speak your voice and live a happy, fulfilled life aligned with your authentic self? A relationship where your needs are taken care of. A relationship YOU are truly deserving and worthy of?
The decision is ultimately yours and only yours to be bold and deviate from your current situation. Ask yourself:
• What is my personal mission, vision and values and also those for my relationship?
• What do I care about?
• What does my partner care about?
• How much work am I going to do today to find and speak my voice that I’ll be proud of in 5, 10, 15 years’ time?
If you would like help understanding more about the decision-making process in a relationship, simply click the button below and get the FREE ‘5 Things Stopping You from Being Decisive in Your Relationship’.
I thank you for taking the time to invest in YOU and your relationship by reading this. I hope you found it to be empowering and valuable. If so, please click ‘like’ and share your thoughts in the comments box below.
P.S. There may be many people you know who could use some guidance on how to find and speak their voice in their relationship, so please do share this post. It could make a real difference to them.
If this is an area you’d like more support with, I’d love to show you how you can step into your confidence and have a strong, powerful and assertive voice that will keep you on the path of finding more happiness and less stress in your relationship, especially the one with yourself. All you have to do is CLICK HERE.
With Love
Teresha, The Confidence Restyler™ Xx
No Comments