How To Deal With Guilt About Speaking Up For Yourself

How can you speak up for yourself, stand up for yourself, without feeling guilty afterwards? This is an extremely important question. I get it all the time from my clients who are recovering from being overly nice to being more direct, real confident, and assertively themselves. And one of the biggest obstacles is they feel so dang guilty afterwards. Can you relate to this? I certainly can. I spent many years being controlled by that guilt. Over time, through repetition, you're going to be able to work with that guilt and then ultimately free yourself of that guilt. And maybe it comes up here and there, but then you just, you know, address it and you feel fine. So let's talk about how to do that. If you're benefiting from this and you want to go further, then go to my website, draz.com,-a z I z.com and you can get my eBook, 5 Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence, which will give you the tools and the specific actions to radically increase your confidence so that you are able to speak up for yourself and feel more direct and assertive in your life. So you just spoke up for yourself, and now you feel guilty. Oh, I'm a bad person. Oh, I'm terrible. Oh, that was so mean. You know, are you replaying it? Are you imagining how hurt they were and just you feel like you're the villain, you're the bad guy. Right, I know that. So what's going on there? Well, what's going on there is you broke a rule or maybe several rules. What rule did you break? Guilt always means that you broke a rule. The important thing to do is start to figure out, well, what rule did I break? Now, maybe you have a simple rule that says you shouldn't speak up for yourself. Maybe you have a rule that says maybe speaking up for yourself or standing up for yourself meant saying no to somebody, and so you have a rule that says I shouldn't say no to anybody. Maybe you called someone out, they didn't do their homework, or they didn't follow through on something or whatever. And then you're like, oh, I shouldn't call anyone out. Or maybe you imagine I made them feel bad, so I should never make anyone feel bad. So what rule? That's the first thing when you're feeling guilty after speaking up for yourself. You say, what rule did I break? And then explore it to find it out. And, you know, usually you're gonna have the same set of rules that keeps coming up. So the more you do this, the faster you get identifying it. Great. The next thing to do is to say, okay, what is that a rule that I agree with? Is that how I want to live? Does that align with my personal Bill of Rights of what I'm allowed to do in this life? And so if one of the things says I should never call anyone out so no one ever feels bad, or I should never interrupt somebody if they're kind of sharing something that wasn't what we talked about and I need to course correct them, is that how I want to live? And there's a powerful exercise I guide people through in one of my group programs called Total Social Freedom. And it's about accessing and living from your personal bill of Rights. So this is a little snippet of that. You want to go further, you can find out about that program. It's a powerful group program that will radically accelerate your growth and confidence. You can go to the coaching page on my website, draziz.com,-r-a z I z.com and then click on the coaching tab. You can find out about my coaching programs and how that works. But in Total Social Freedom, I guide you through your Bill of Rights. So what is that's the counter to all these rules? So, for example, I have this as a. Especially in meetings and other things if I need to. I mean, I've learned, I've trained myself to not be a nice guy. Because if I'm super nice in my meetings, then shit doesn't happen. I don't get what I want. I overpay people. I don't get the results. It's a mess. And so I realize if someone's. Especially if I'm paying them, they're a contractor, they're employee or team member or something, and they're doing something. That's not what we talked about. I got to say, hold on a second here. What is this thing? Because we talked about this and you're doing that. So just did that recently and afterwards there's this sense of like, oh, and what is it? Oh, I should never make anyone feel bad. That person's going to feel bad, and I made them feel bad. Okay. So I got to say, is that a rule that I want to live by? Well, no. What's more important? Well, I think it's important to be able to be direct and speak up, to make sure that we do good work and get the job done. Okay. So I have a right to be direct and speak up. That's one of my Bill of Rights. I have a right to speak up about anything for any reason. So you get to construct this. And there's a short version of that in my book, not nice. So maybe you've read that, you can go through that. But the much deeper and more powerful version is in that group program I run. So I have a right to speak up for myself and be direct. Now you take it one step further and you say, you know what? I am allowed to speak up for myself and be direct. I have a right. I am allowed. You notice that little subtle distinction? It's a language thing, but it's powerful. I'm allowed to do this. And the third thing which I love is in my reality, I'm allowed to speak up for myself and be direct, right? And if you just go through that really simple process, all of a sudden some of the guilt lifts. Maybe all of the guilt lifts just like that. I mean, there's a process to really do this on all key areas in your life so that that guilt doesn't just keep coming back again and again and again. And as you do that, you really upgrade your bill of rights and you give yourself this permission. Now, you're not breaking those rules. You've upgraded your rules. You're allowed to live life on your terms. And guess what? Just take a zoom out for a second. Which one do you think is going to produce better results for me? For the employees, for the contractors, for everybody? Me being more direct and assertive? Speaking up for myself or me being nice and pleasing? Same question for you. In your life, what's going to work better in your workplace, in your romantic relationship, in your social life, with your family, with anyone, with anyone everywhere, with your cable company, with anyone you interact with? Where does it benefit you to make it not allowed to be direct and speak up for yourself? So upgrade that and I'd love to help you with that process. If you want to find out more about total social freedom, click down below to go to drz.com Dr. Aziz.com and click on the coaching page. And then there you'll be able to apply and find out all about the programs that are run and all that stuff. So you can do this, give yourself that permission, and life can get so much better and you don't have to feel so guilty all the time. Fantastic. Until we speak again. May you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.