Day 189 - Why Speaking is so Difficult – The Silent Type

 

Thus far I have covered preferring to be alone, not being good with people and not being able to communicate effectively which are some of the dimensions behind a typical silent type character. Today I am going to write about speaking.

I have never been able to use words effectively to express myself. I could not say how I felt, because the words simply did not come to me in way that can explain it exactly. So I decided to not speak allot, because I felt it was a waste of time. What I did not realize back then is that the reason why the words did not come was because I did not have the words – I did not have the vocabulary. It is fascinating how such a decision greatly affected my life. If I realized the importance of vocabulary in my school days I would have done better at school. Instead I compromised myself and developed a personality and defined myself as being the strong silent type. A wonderful justification and excuse.

Looking at this whole situation I see now that being the silent type was not “just who I am”, it was a choice I made based on my fears and not having the tools to communicate effectively. I was not born this way – it was a choice and now I choose to rather be effective with communication. Now to go venture forth on my journey. Without an effective vocabulary I cannot be specific with words. I did not understand the importance of vocabulary back then. In School they say it is important to read – good advice I ignored.

The first step in effective communication is developing your vocabulary in order to use words effectively so that is what I am going to do – learn, understand and apply new words. Interesting point here is with me being a musician and writing songs I always had great difficulty writing lyrics for my music and that is because I did not have an effective vocabulary. If I had an effective vocabulary writing would be easier.

A very useful phrase I have learnt is that knowledge is useless without application. The next step is to place myself in situations where I use words and speak to explain things. This will assist me to communicate effectively and support me to get over that uncomfortable/nervousness I have whenever I explain things. A simple thing to do here would be to start doing Vlogs so that is what I will do – push through the resistances and make videos until speaking effectively is as natural as breathing.

Speak, king, quest, journey, video, vlog, support, DIY, directive, practical, loner, silent type, personality, Desteni

Day 188 - I Prefer Being Alone – The Silent Type...

 

I am On the topic of defining myself as the silent type.

Another point regarding the silent type is preferring to be alone. I always preferred to be alone in most situations. In school my high point of the day was spending time in room playing guitar or playing a game on the computer. I was comfortable with being by myself and liked it. I also liked being with friends since I was also comfortable around my friends. It would seem that comfortably is the main point here and the question is – Why was I more comfortable with myself?

I was not really a full on silent person that did not say anything – I was outgoing and all that. When I was in a group of friends and everybody talked I usually did not say much. One on one with friends or small groups I would engage in conversations, but mostly I liked to would listen. That is one cool thing of not saying much – I became very observant and noticed things. Anyway – the point is that I was more of an observer and did not participate much with anybody expect friends. One of the reasons was that I was not effective with participating or engaging conversations with people and the conversations I did have was me listening and the other conversing. Within this I see now that me preferring to be alone was actually hiding from people.

The consequences of my inability to communicate effectively was me being the silent type and because I was not effective at communication I preferred being alone since there was not need to converse with myself. Unfortunately back then I did not understand the importance of communicating – You cannot function effectively in this world if you lack communication skills. Really – if you have effective communication skills life becomes a bit easier. I did not develop these skills for myself, because talking to people was uncomfortable for me. I did not step beyond my comfort zone to expand myself which resulted in me being stuck. So it is time to do that – Step beyond my comfort zone.

This is the only way to expand yourself and become more effective – to push yourself beyond your limits and push through any and all resistance's along the way. Otherwise you stay the same. A simple example is learning to drive – at first it is a bit scary and tricky to get used to clutch control and traffic on the road, but you did not allow that fear and resistance to keep you from driving. You push through and eventually it all became second nature. Driving is like natural now. Stepped out the comfort zone and made driving a part of it.

I am not saying that being alone with yourself is wrong/bad. It is cool that I developed a point of comfortably within being alone by myself and its cool if you have done the same, but not being able to communicate effectively with others and hiding yourself in a room is limiting yourself extensively. Writing is cool practice – using the written word to communicate. It gives me time to look at what I write to bring out a message effectively, but If I would to speak this it would not be as good. Now it is time to use my lungs to push air through my vocal cords to produce a sound that I can manipulate with my tongue – or in simpler terms: Speak.

(More on speaking in my next blog where I will start a step by step process on how to speak effectively.)

Day 187 - Not being Good with people - The Silent Type...

 

Today I ran into somebody and said hello and the usual greetings. I notice that I am always uncomfortable in these situations and usually simply smile and find ways to end the conversation. I have always been “the silent type” and was never really good at meeting new people. I have defined myself as being the strong silent type and told myself it’s a “lifestyle choice”. That is a very nice way to hide from the fact that I am not good with people, because I never really worked on this point or developed the skills in order to be effective with people.

What happens then is that when I run into somebody I know the uncomfortable feeling I have is not knowing how to handle myself in this particular situation. I see other people being al relaxed and genuine when in the same situation, like it is natural and then I would judge myself for not being so natural and ask myself why I cannot do this. The answer is simple – I never taught myself how. I have the tools to do this and it is time to start.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be uncomfortable when running into someone I know

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to investigate the reason why I am uncomfortable and to simply accept it as a part of me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself as being the silent type – not realizing that I did this, because I was not good/effective with people.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to work on becoming good/effective with people and push through to make it happen.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to realize that the uncomfortable feeling I have is because of thoughts and feelings and the belief that I have created that I am not good with people

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to when I meet/greet people to allow thoughts and feelings to direct me and then want to end the conversation based on that instead of not allowing myself to be direct and to direct myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to even before I go to the person to meet/greet them create anxiety within myself, because I am already thinking about how I am going to do this and remember that I am not good with people.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to stop the thoughts and feelings and not to participate in the moment with the mind.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to breathe and be here in the moment focusing on what I am doing right now when I meet people – within this I realize that doing this removes all that unnecessary bullcrap that complicate things from the equation and give me the opportunity to actually participate within what I am doing.

I commit myself to stop defining myself as being the silent type and not good with people – instead I push myself to practice and develop a natural expression in order to be effective with people.

I commit myself to stop participating in thoughts and feelings and beliefs when I meet/greet people that I define as being uncomfortable – Instead I breathe and be here in the moment focusing on what I am doing

I commit myself to stop wanting to end conversations based on how I feel at the moment – Instead I Direct myself and don’t allow feelings and thoughts to direct me