“You’re not being humble, you’re being hijacked by your lizard survival brain.  Every time you withhold your voice out of fear, the nervous system logs it as a threat.  Truth doesn’t need content, it needs a spine,” Sarai Speer.  Oh this woman is one of my new heroes.  I found her on an IG scrolling break and she immediately caught my ear because the first words she says are, “Heeeeyyyyy Fuck Nugget!” which, for whatever reason, makes perfect sense to me and seems a perfectly reasonable way to address someone.  Regardless, after some scrolling through her posts and reels, I understand this woman is a gem more people need to know about.  She works to help people regulate their nervous system, and truth be told, the techniques she uses on her feed for the free content are nothing new to me—it’s primarily breathing and focus to redirect awareness which is something we all need reminders of.  What I did find incredibly valuable is her break down of what she’s trying to explain, the quote above being a great example.  I could never fully articulate the science behind what’s happening when we don’t use our voice.  I would say things like, “When we hold ourselves back, we are telling the universe we don’t trust ourselves.”  Sure, that’s true, but I’m trying to put some real context to that: our bodies have a physical electrical discharge so when we withhold ourselves for any reason, we are telling our body what is/isn’t acceptable and that feedback is received by the body and the universe.

To be fair, I’m not suggesting we go no holds barred and spit out every thought that passes through our mind—that’s a disaster waiting to happen.  We do need to find a way to balance what we feel/initial impulse with when to say it and whether or not we need to tailor that message.  There really isn’t a time to hold back because we’re afraid of what someone will say/think about us.  We’ve given people power and authority over us because we feel like they can determine what we have access to—and, unfortunately, in some cases that is true simply because of the nature of how we operate as a society.  We still operate hierarchically and allow people to make choices on our behalf and we, unfortunately operate under the impression that we need to perform/be a certain way for people for myriad reasons that, at the end of the day, all come down to our survival.  Survival means fitting in and playing the game and often times manipulating others to get what we want.  But what happens when we strip all that away and start saying what we need to say?  When we start expressing what we need and what we really think?  That is when we start contributing our real value to the world because we aren’t filtering down our thoughts.  Sure, context and delivery matter, but that doesn’t mean we don’t share our message because we think we have to be humble or that we don’t know enough.

The point is this: don’t let misperceived humility be what prevents us from living authentically.  We’ve all been around long enough to understand that there is a time and a place to express certain things but we can’t seem to come to the understanding that we don’t need permission to express ourselves should we so choose.  Yeah, that can come down to knowing that just because we can doesn’t mean that we should, but that shouldn’t suggest we don’t get a voice.  Everyone has value and sometimes, even when we don’t know what the hell we’re talking about, we’re there to ask the question someone else won’t or to spark the thought someone needed to bring home a point.  If we are expressing truth in a non-malicious way then there is no reason to withhold.  That takes a lot of regulation of the thought process, and yes, of the nervous system.  We can train the mind and body to not be so reactive to things and that can take a lot of work because we’ve spent most of our lives training ourselves to look for these threats.  The key now is to understand that threat is a perception and it’s in our minds.  We can teach ourselves to view that differently simply through practice and exposure and reprioritizing what matters.  It’s funny how in a time when everyone has a platform and chance to use their voices, we still fear using them for what we really believe in, like we’re afraid of being seen as we are.  I will reiterate: we don’t need to be perfect, we just need to be perfectly ourselves.  That’s all we really need.  If we continually find ourselves in situations where we have to be quiet or tame our voice, then we need to start asking if we are in the right venue.  So sit with those impulses for a while, sit with the present, work on that neurological decompressing, and redirect our intentions to living the most authentic life we can live and watch what happens when that pressure goes away.  We can breathe and all those things we built up in our minds disappear.  Don’t be humble: be real.