Why You Can't Say What You Actually Mean

You walk into a conversation or a meeting, you know what you really think, what you really feel, what you want to say, and then in that moment something different comes out of your mouth. It's softer, it's pleasing, maybe it's too nice, watered down. And then you walk away from that situation frustrated, like, why didn't I just say what I wanted to say? Why didn't I just shoot straight there? And if this pattern keeps happening for you, there is a reason. That's what you're going to discover in this— why that keeps happening. And it's not some problem, it's not some lack of willpower, it's not some weakness, it's actually a survival strategy that's happening beneath the level of your conscious mind. It's happening in a deeper center in your brain that's keeping you safe. You're going to see exactly what that is and how to shift this in, in the most fundamental way. So what's going on in the situation? It could be a work situation, a personal situation. Well, it might start to feel a bit more high stakes, and this doesn't have to be like make-or-break life stake situation, but it's okay. I need to tell this person something they might not like. I need to have a direct conversation with this person. I need to question or challenge them or reveal something that could upset them in a personal situation, right? Maybe I'm going to ask for something, or maybe I have to tell them something, or I don't want the same thing as them, or I need something in this relationship, but I'm not sure if they're going to want to give it or not. Or we have a different idea about what to do with the kids or the family, or, you know, where do we go for Thanksgiving or whatever. And in those situations, you're not sure how the other person is going to respond, and it could be, quote, bad, right? What's bad? They get upset, they get annoyed, they push back. You're gonna hurt their feelings. Something is gonna happen that's, that's not what we don't want. And then this pattern kicks in. And the reason this pattern kicks in— and this pattern, by the way, is what I call the Diplomat, where you soften what you say, you make it smooth, palatable, you edit it, you leave out the rough stuff because you're overly taking care of the other person, is what you might tell yourself. But underneath, you're making sure of one thing, which is that they don't disapprove of you. And this is what I call the Approval Trap, where we have learned that disapproval is dangerous, and Therefore, I can't be myself around you. I have to hide a bunch of myself or pretend or polish or do something. And this is the opposite of authentic confidence, which is what I help people develop in the world. So let me give you a specific example of where this came up with a client recently, where he works in a company. He has someone that reports to him, and there is a deadline that my client has that he needs this guy to get his stuff done so that my client's not having to wait around and get in hot water with his supervisor. So he has this conversation— we'll just call the guy he's going to talk to Ryan— and he's had this conversation with Ryan twice where he needs something from Ryan. I need you to finish this report so that I could do this and that. And he had the conversation with Ryan, and Ryan's like, yep, I'm gonna totally get it to you. And then nothing comes. And then he has another follow-up conversation with Ryan, and Ryan's like, okay, yeah, this came up and that, and I can't— and he's like, okay, so I need this now. Okay, totally, I'm on it. And then I'm talking to my client He's had 2 conversations, he still doesn't have what he needs. And now it's been almost 2 months as he's needing to manage the other person and the people above him and deal with that. And then he's feeling like frustrated with Ryan. He goes home and he's like, ah, he gets upset with the guy, he's resentful. And then he calms down and he's okay, you know, and then he makes excuses for the guy. He goes through all this inner drama. And then I asked him, so, you know, what is it that you want to say to him? And when he, my client is with me, he's not in that situation, he's very clear. He's like, Ryan, we need this. We are overdue by more than a month on this, and I— we need to find out what you're doing that is preventing this from being completed. We need to talk this through until we find a solution, and we need this by next week. We need like a hard deadline. Next Friday, I need this on my desk in order for me to move forward. And the reason— and if I don't have that, now I'm getting this and describing specifically what's the problems coming for him in the company, why he needs it, and then a problem-solving conversation with Ryan to find out why it hasn't happened yet. And he describes this whole thing to me. It's like he's a different person with me than with Ryan. Have you noticed that for you? It's like you're a different person when you're alone, or when you're with a close friend, or where you're sharing your idea clearly. But then in the moment, something else comes out of him. And so what happens— I ask him, what happens when you get in the situation? Well, he gets in that situation, he's gonna say that, and instead he says, hey, so I just want to check in about that report and how it's going. Oh well, you know, this is what happened the last time they talked about it. Well, I've, you know, had this come up and I'm waiting on this and I decided I need to redo that thing. And my client was like, okay, so is there anything I could do to support you in getting that complete? Now, as you're hearing this, you might be having a visceral reaction. I know I sure do because I've lived this pattern myself. And this is honestly the reaction my client had too is afterwards he's like, ugh, ugh, bleh, why was I saying that? Ugh, I'm so soft. What do I do? Doing, right? It's because in that moment, he's at war inside of himself. Part of him wants to be direct and straight and real, and then another part of him is holding on for dear life because it has this whole wiring in there that says, if Ryan disapproves of me, and that means Ryan could get upset, Ryan could get angry, Ryan could get his feelings hurt and then dislike my client, whatever this case may be, not all peachy keen smooth, hey, we're— hey, no problem, get it to me later, anything other than that, there could be bad feelings in Ryan, and that all those bad feelings we could summarize as disapproval. And that disapproval is danger to the nervous system in my client. And so he cannot just over— like push over that because the body is like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't let go! Duh duh duh! And it'll freak out and get really tight. What's happening there is the diplomat pattern is keeping you alive or so it thinks. But it's not really, right? He could say something very different in that situation. He knows what he wants to say. And that's the question I have for you, is where is this showing up for you? Do you know what you want to say, right? And the same thing can happen in a romantic situation. You know, same client, spouse gets upset with him, and boom, he goes into diplomat mode. Okay, I'll say whatever's needed. Oh, okay, I'm not going to leave that thing out. Okay, I'm not gonna— he had a situation where something came up and he wanted to go leave her with the children. He could go take care of this thing. But then what they talked about earlier was he had an agreement that I was going to be on with approaches her, it's like, oh, hey, I'm sorry, and I— this and that. And his request was so watered down that it was unclear that he was saying, hey, I need to be gone for a couple hours today, can you be with the kids? And so these very simple things— and I could give you example after example, hundreds of them, thousands of them— and they're not just minor things like, oh, I ordered a soup and they brought me the wrong one, and then I felt very uncomfortable and apologetic and bad about asking for that to be changed. I hear that often from people who are I mean, these are not like non-functioning people, right? These are high-functioning, professional, capable, intelligent, powerful people in the world. But then they get in these certain situations and that's why it's so frustrating for them. They're like, why am I doing this? Right? It's because it's below that, that you're the conscious you. And then they ask for the replacement on their order, if at all. They might just run the avoider strategy here, which is a different one, which is like, I'm not stuck, I'll just eat it, I'll just eat it. Right? But in this case, you may say, hey, hey, I'm sorry to, um, sorry to bother you, but I think there's a mistake with my order. Don't hurt me, right? So minor stuff up to some of these examples like I'm talking about at work, which can create a lot of stress, a lot of overwhelm, a lot of backlog, a lot of resentment, and a lot of people not taking you fully seriously. People not respecting you fully because when we soften everything so much, it's like we don't have any fangs left. We're all gums. And so people know, oh, if I don't do what this person says, if I delay, and again, they might not be consciously sitting at their desk being like, "Hehehe, I'm gonna thwart him. She's gonna be so frustrated with me," right? No, it's just they got priorities, they got stuff going on, they got their own work stuff, their own family stuff. And so they're like, "Okay, I gotta get these 3 things done today. And oh, if, you know, Bob, if I don't get that done for Bob, Bob's gonna come to me and be like, 'Hey, I just— do you think maybe something came up? Maybe you could do it next week?'" and you're like, "Eh, that's not that unpleasant. That's okay. I can handle that," right? So there's no fang, there's no bite to it. Not that you have to rip people's heads off, but you have to be very clear and direct, and there needs to be maybe perhaps an uncomfortable conversation that needs to happen about what happens. In this case of the client I was mentioning earlier, if Ryan doesn't get this to him by next Friday, what is going to happen? So that's— and all of a sudden when I describe this with my diplomat clients, they're like, "Oh my God, my stomach's so uncomfortable." Bleh, right? Which is a whole nother issue. That's a side— that's a byproduct of all this repression and holding things back and suppressing yourself is I've worked with clients who have all kinds of stomach issues, back pain, neck pain, any migraine headaches. It can show up in all kinds of ways because we're holding ourselves back so much, and that creates a frustration. Something like— it's almost like holding back a sneeze, right? If you keep doing that— or I could use a more graphic example of holding back when something wants to be released from your body. The short term, maybe once in a while, but doing that as a lifestyle that's gonna be a problem. And that's exactly what happens when you hold back and you soften and you hold back and you soften and hold back and you soften. And that's not even the, the highest level of consequence I've seen of this for clients, right? So we talked about the soup example, we talked about at work and some of the problems that can show up. This can go even further. I've had people tell me, I had a business partner and as we were forming the partnership, I realized I don't want to work with this person as a business partner. And now they're my business partner. And I meet this client, they've been, this person's been their business partner for 3 years, but they knew when they first started and they couldn't, they didn't wanna say no to them. Or they said it so softly and the person's like, "Oh, come on, are you sure? All right, I guess, fine." I know people that I met who have been in relationships, romantic relationships, dating, partners, spouses, they have families together, and they have known for a long time that they want something different. Now, it might not be to end the relationship, although I've seen that before, but it could also be that they really need to, "Hey, we need to do this differently," or, "We need to radically change how we are with each other or with our kids or our love life or our sex life or like," we need to have some real freaking conversations. And they have, like, if they brought it up, it's been so tentative and so soft that the slightest pushback or questioning or anything other than over-the-top smiling, nodding approval, they pull it right back. I call this authenticity if it's allowed. Okay, I'm going to be myself, but only if it's cool. We cool? Okay, then fine. I'll change that. I'll cut that out. I don't, I don't have that part of me. You don't need to see that. No, I don't. I don't really have those feelings at all. Oh, yeah, I didn't really want anything anyway. It's cool. We're cool, right? And then we push it all down. Do you see yourself in this pattern? There is a way to change this. You can. This is not— even if it's been going for 20, 30 years, as I said recently, pretty much every person I worked with, this pattern has been running for at least 20 years in their life. And it changes, and it changes fast, and it changes radically, and they get to become their full self. And that's why I can experience such radical transformations with clients. It's not because, oh, they had no confidence whatsoever and I did some magic confidence dust upon them, it's because we unwire this pattern and remove that sense of threat around disapproval. We train that into their nervous system, and then their— your real self— you have a real confident self. It comes out at times, doesn't it? Right? Well, it just can come out more and more and more and more. It can come out at work and come out in social life and come out in a high-stakes situation. It can come out when someone's disappointed or disapproves of you. And so all of a sudden there's this transformation, but it's really just your real self coming out. And so if you want to find out more about that, I have a quiz you can take. It's called, you know, Discover Your Approval Type. If you go to www.draziz.com, there's a link in the description below, and you can in 2 minutes discover your approval type. Remember I mentioned diplomat in this video? There's, there's a total of 4. And beyond that, you can learn what it takes to really change this. I have an in-depth training you can watch for free that will show you exactly the 3 steps that I do with people to help them fundamentally change this in their life. So the best news possible is you can free yourself from this. It just takes you seeing it and being ready and willing to address this underneath the hood and make the fundamental changes that are going to change your life. So 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.