Do you find it easier to talk about speaking your truth than actually doing it?
Speaking up and speaking your truth is an essential aspect of living a life of passion, fulfillment, and authenticity. However, we struggle to find ways to speak our truth for many of us, myself included.
Not too long ago, I was talking to a friend who told me a poignant and powerful story about speaking his truth. He was in a grocery store and saw a woman cruelly yelling at her kids.
He explained that he walked over to the woman and asked her to treat her children with kindness and love.
Bold, right?
The woman responded by telling him to stick it up his “you-know-what,” grabbed her kids, and rushed out of the store.
My friend explained that he didn’t know if he did the wrong thing. He was scared, upset, and emotional. But, he also said, “Mike, when I walked away, I noticed something interesting. I wasn’t blaming anyone. However, since I spoke up,
I was at peace and not wasting any time or energy blaming anyone. I have no idea if what I said impacted that woman, but I don’t have to live with her. I have to live with myself.”
By Speaking Your Truth, You Open the Door to Freedom
What if we dared to speak up like that in all areas of life – our work, our relationships, our family, with people in public, and in general?
Imagine the freedom and power we would possess! It’s not at all about getting in people’s faces and challenging them, although sometimes it might take that form.
An important distinction to remember is the difference between our “opinions” and our “truth.”
We all have opinions – but remember: our opinions are not facts.
Our opinions are filled with righteous judgment and an arrogant sense that we’re “right,” and those who disagree with us are “wrong.”
But our “truth” runs much deeper than any of our opinions.
Truth is About How We Feel
Truth is not about being right. Truth is about how we feel and what is real for us. It’s about expressing what we think and feel in an authentic, vulnerable, and transparent way.
We are all entitled to our own opinions.
For example, I might have an opinion that you are rude. I might even have evidence of things you did in the past that were rude. My truth about this, though, might be that I worry you will hurt my feelings, or I don’t like some of the things you do, which make me feel unsafe and uncomfortable around you.
When we let go of being “right” about our opinions and take responsibility for our experience, we can speak our truth from a much deeper and more authentic place.
Speaking this deeper truth will not only liberate us, but it has the potential to make a difference for others and bring us closer together with them.
How Do We Enhance and Deepen Our Capacity to Speak Our Truth With Kindness, Love, and Authenticity?
There are lots of things we can do to accomplish this – here are three to think about.
Stop Managing Other People’s Feelings
When we try to manage other people’s emotions, we use it as a cop-out not to speak our truth.
When we let go of taking care of others in a condescending way, it frees us and them up to have adult conversations, which sometimes can get a little sticky or tense when we’re speaking our truth.
Be Real, Not Right
I wrote a whole article about this – click here to read it.
When we focus on winning or being right, we no longer can access the deepest places within our hearts, which is where our real truth comes from.
When we let go of our attachment to the outcome of a conversation, what the other person thinks, and our erroneous obsession with always having to be right, we allow ourselves to get real.
Being vulnerable and transparent are the key elements of speaking your truth and not dominating the conversation and the person we’re talking to.
Practice
Like anything and everything else in life, the best way to get better, deepen our capacity, and grow is to practice.
Will you mess it up? Of course! Will you say the wrong things sometimes? Yes! Will people get upset, offended, or defensive at times? Absolutely. It is not about being perfect. It is about being yourself and speaking authentically.
Have empathy and compassion with yourself as you practice – this is not easy for most of us.
Remember that each situation is always new and different.
Speaking your truth is not always going to be easy – but it will be worth it.
Speaking up can be incredibly scary and challenging for us. Even if your legs shake, your voice quivers, or your heart races (all of which usually happen when we get real and vulnerable) – take a deep breath, dig down for the courage you have within you, and be willing to speak your truth.
When we do this, we can watch our relationships and lives literally transform.
Where in your life are you not speaking your truth, and what are you willing to do about that? Share your thoughts, action ideas, insights, and more on my blog below.
I have written five books about the importance of trust, authenticity, appreciation, and more. In addition, I deliver keynotes and seminars (both in-person and virtually) to empower people, leaders, and teams to grow, connect, and perform their best. Finally, as an expert in teamwork, leadership, and emotional intelligence, I teach techniques that allow people and organizations to be more authentic and effective. Find out more about how I can help you and your team achieve your goals today. You can also listen to my podcast here.
Liked this post? Here are three more!
How to Appreciate Your Body and Love Yourself
How to Embrace Disappointment and Learn From it
This article was published on September 15, 2009, and has been updated for 2021.
Sam says
This article resonates so much with me that I feel like it’s my own words.
My complex is that I feel it’s exactly right but I feel when I exude this type of assertiveness (I could be the guy in the grocery store telling the woman) that I get such back lash from other people. Why is that?
Jason Incognit says
Because everyone else is in a collective thought as it seems to my opinion. They have similar mind sets and belong to a group that share ideas, practices, and information.
Frank says
I have been a big time offender of trying to manage other peoples feelings and letting their emotions affect my mood… etc. I have been doing 12 step work in Al-Anon to help me for over a year now and it has been awesome!! Still at times it can be hard to speak my truth (or even know it is there) when I am wrapped up in what other people think. Practice, practice, practice!
Rebekah says
All you wrote in this featured article is profound. Very insightful; this one will be re-read quite a few times as I try to speak my truth but with kindness and empathy.
WaterLearner says
Thanks for the article! I can’t agree more that choosing the path of compassion does not necessary make one appear nice and acceptable.
Most often, one needs to stand up against adversity for one’s deepest beliefs.
I would definitely be visiting your blog again. I found your article from Chopra website.
Kristi says
Thank you for the story!
Thank you for the tips!
Thank you for your honesty 🙂
For a moment I wonder, why do we do this all? Why don’t we naturally speak our truth?
But then again I think it doesn’t matter much why we don’t speak our truth, what matters is that we would all speak our truths 😀
Thank you for the insight! 🙂
Mark says
Thkining like that is really amazing
Dennis says
What is the difference between “my truth” which is really a manifestation of how I see and feels things, and “the truth” which is a verifyable fact that is not influenced by my feelings ?
Mike Robbins says
Yes, these things are different. Our truth is based on how we feel, what we see, our opinion, and what is true for us. “The” truth is more about facts and data. In life and in our relationships, most of the issues we run into aren’t about facts and data, they are about how we see things and how we feel. Being able to express our truth and also listen to the truths of others is super important. And, as things have evolved politically and socially in recent years, especially with all of the misinformation out there, the lines between opinion and fact have been blurred in a dangerous way, so we have to be mindful of this.
Cathy says
This speak my truth stuff is the biggest pile of bull***t on the planet. It is for weak minded idiots who are self indulgent and childish. Oprah pushes this crap. Meghan Markle “spoke her truth” when she lied about Harry’s family and stabbed them in the back. This psychobabble gobbledegook allows one to lie, attack others, and not take responsibility for ones mistakes. It is ruining society. And only pussies do it.
KJ says
Some people physically feel fine, health, and fit. Sometimes these feelings are true. They really are physically fine, healthy, and fit. Sometimes their physical feelings about themselves is false. A lie. They reality is not how they feel, but how they truly are.
They are truly dying from cancer, but don’t know it, and are feeling fine.
Believing a lie can be costly.
Stephanie says
What about that mother’s truth? What might have gone differently if the “friend” had instead of judging the mother, asked her if she needed help, had listened with a compassionate ear towards her? I’m not saying it was right for her to yell but every parent has had that day when the kids have pushed them too far, and mothers get the brunt of public blame and shame when the kids act out of control in public, but also when they try too hard to keep them in line in public. But yes please, let’s take our self-righteousness out on some woman without knowing her circumstance or seeing where she is coming from. She’s just the cipher to justify this homily, so sure, speak your truth without any regard for the larger context or the other person’s perspective. I prefer to live by “Be kind to one another; you never know what someone else is going through.” His compassion might have done more to change that mother’s attitude than a judgmental word did, but he’ll never know because he didn’t take the time to know.
Public I says
This was incredibly well written and inspiring.
I have always had issues with speaking up in any kind of situation that’s going to make someone else uncomfortable, it’s one of my worst traits and it’s very hard to get over.
It’s something I do wish to change. When I imagine who I the type of person I would like myself to be, it’s someone that is authentically themselves and I hate to say, I’m really not that person right now—but I’m working on it
I worry too much about giving opinions but instead of that it’s Time to express my truth and how I feel
Khan says
The statement “Truth is About How We Feel” is problematic. Calling deeply-felt feelings “truth” is misleading and leads to conflation with measurable truth. I see no difference between a deeply-felt “truth” and a deeply-felt opinion. If “your truth” includes a deeply-felt desire to stab a Smurf crawling up my back, you better expect to get pounded when you approach me with your knife. I’m willing to listen to your deep thoughts all day, and you should be willing to listen to mine. Just don’t call them “your truth” because that’s deceptive. And don’t expect me to adopt your truth as my own. If personal truth is based on “how we feel, what we see, our opinion, and what is true for us,” all Robbins is essentially saying is that we should focus more on feelings and less on facts. Facts don’t care about your feelings.
Matt says
“Truth is not about being right. Truth is about how we feel and what is real for us.”
This is one of the worst and most anti-science nonsense I have ever read. The world DEPENDS and PROVES to us that objective truth exists outside ourselves – or our trains won’t run, cooking can’t happen, government function, or the universe itself hold together. The world doesn’t magically change if I change my feelings about it.
This also flies in the face of decades of psychology and social science that proves there are objectively better and worse ways for we as individuals and society as a whole to act and behave. TED talks are based on the notion that we should understand causes of problems and then can make changes and know they will work. There are great and proven ways to handle conflict, disagreements, addiction, and all manner of interactions we have with each other.
Instead, you throw all that away and tell people to just trust their feeling. Feelings that change every hour like the tides and the wind. It denies that we can actually understand problems and then come up with ways to solve them. Even worse, you say that their feelings are the TRUTH about what’s going on – then admit they are probably wrong a great percentage of the time.
Instead, what you should say is that you can validate what you are feeling, but then need to take the next step to figure out what the right response should be. Our feelings are NOT truth. Our feelings are our impression of what’s going on.
If scientists just went with what they felt about rocket engines, power plants, or the safety of the cars they developed – we’d all be doomed.
Alison says
Also, in many cases, the world actually does change according to our feelings. What we perceive is all we have. A collective perception doesn’t exist. And your own trust in the evidence based system you believe in, like I do as well, is still rooted in the circular rationale that is our own senses. Our own perception. Our own grasp of what “evidence” is. While many truths must logically be objective, we can only perceive them and the evidence supporting them subjectively.
Alison says
Your hypothesis about What scientists, who are not a monolith, would do in the event they stopped using evidence is actually a guess. A counterfactual conditional, and as such, irrefutable and unprovable. You laid faith in evidence to avoid a possible future you have no proof would or could ever exist. You could have used evidence! The inconsistency is amusing.
Alison says
I feel like the kindest, most aware option would have been to see that she was struggling and ask if he could help somehow. At minimum he might have asked if she was feeling stressed and remind her that she was probably doing better than she thought she was. Maybe offered to buy her a tea or a soda. But walking up to a stressed mother after deeming her cruel without any context and telling her how to behave or parent is not kind by any stretch of the imagination. Just a note. Have a nice day.
Pudgie Conroy says
How do I speak the truth in the loss of my daughter
Mike Robbins says
I am so sorry to hear about the loss of your daughter. As the father of two daughters myself, I cannot imagine the pain, sadness, and grief you must be experiencing. My heart is with you and your family. While I don’t know from personal experience of losing a child, having lost my sister, both of my parents, and some other people really close to me, there can be opportunities to speak up, share how we feel, and speak our truth in the midst of our grief journey.