Speaking Up – Part 7 – Personal Cost

When I withhold my contribution, it is usually because I think I can better guarantee the outcome I want or prevent the outcome I don't want. Basically I turn into a manipulative schemer … which isn't necessarily 'bad' – depending on the outcome I am seeking.

As a trainer and a coach for the More To Life program, I often withhold information, in order to facilitate someone getting that information for themselves. Information gained that way has a much better retention rate. Otherwise, it becomes just another sound byte, soon lost in the myriad of sound bytes that come our way daily. That is a conscious choice to withhold what I know … for a higher purpose … assisting another to their own truth vs pretending to be some kind of a guru. Heart vs ego.

Manipulation is more often associated with the dark side – aiming for some kind of personal gain, usually at the expense of someone or something else. As a teenager, I remember not telling the whole truth about someone I was dating, or fudging the exact details of where I was going, etc.

But it all really slammed home for me, when I was in my early 20s, newly married – on a trip out-of-town with several other couples. One couple didn't show up for dinner, we figured they were having a good time. After dinner we went up to their hotel room to rag on them about missing dinner. She opened the door, mascara streaming down her face, looking totally pitiful, pleading with us to help her, because her husband had been beating her up.

I was totally shocked. I did not say a word. I had all kinds of reasons – "he was my husband's friend, I didn't know her well, this was something for the others to handle, I shouldn't get in the middle of someone else's business; if I jump in the middle of this, I'll look like a fool, cuz I don't know what to do" ….and on it went inside my head.

Forty years later, I made peace with my silence that night. For forty years, while that moment wasn't constantly on my mind, it would surface every now and then, torturing me for not speaking up, for acting  as if I had no heart, no personal authority; as if I were a coward in every true sense of the word. Not speaking up that night made it easy for me to doubt my inherent worth as a caring, valiant being.

The personal cost of stifling that voice from my heart was fundamentally a loss of faith in myself to BE myself. My way through was to ask for her forgiveness, and then ask forgiveness from myself for betraying my heart.