Overcoming the fear of speaking up at work to improve your mental health
|Published
Are you secretly terrified of speaking up in a work context?
Perhaps no one notices it, but it’s something you battle with every day. Or maybe you’re one of those guys who’s the first to comment in a meeting.
But as soon as the words have left your mouth you experience instant regret (or sharer’s remorse) and hope there aren’t any follow-up questions to the perspective you shared so boldly.
These might seem like small things, irritating little quirks in your personality.
But over time this inability to express yourself and be confident in who you are in various situations can wear you down mentally and emotionally.
Eventually, it will affect your performance, productivity and well-being.
As we highlight Mental Health Awareness Month this October, here’s a question: How confident are you to truly be yourself in any given situation?
The subconscious narratives from our lives significantly impact how confident we are to express ourselves.
When the subconscious is filled with negative and insecure beliefs from various life circumstances, it may be quite difficult to feel confident in our self-expression in a wide variety of circumstances (this is actually the case for most people because of the way the mind pays more attention to negative messages than positive ones).
However, when subconscious narratives are more positive, our self-expression is more confident because we consider ourselves as truly bringing value into the interactions that we have.
This frees us up to be appropriately assertive, independent, and comfortable with sharing our thoughts and feelings without that emotional load we often carry during or afterwards.
The good news is that you can change your subconscious narratives and self-perception.
These factors lie in the domain of Emotional Intelligence (EQ), a set of emotional skills that can actually be developed and strengthened like muscles.
By developing your EQ you can rewire the neural pathways in your brain to have more positive subconscious narratives.
This shift will allow you to feel more positive and become more aware of the value you bring to the table.
Imagine a decrease in the daily anxiety you experience in making yourself heard in meetings. Imagine being able to show up more confidently.
When we are released from the mental and emotional load of how we voice our thoughts in a group context, our mental and emotional well-being significantly improves.
Local SA startup, Mygrow, has built an EQ Development Technology solution (an app that works like an online gym) that helps to rewire the subconscious narratives and build the power skills in the domain of EQ, that you need to improve career performance and productivity.
Try it free here.