We talk about valuing transparency, but baring our soul? That sounds scary. Yet the day comes when a difficult conversation needs to be spoken and you need to speak your truth one way or another.
How Learning to Speak Your Truth Helps
Learning to live your truth and speak your truth from your soul breaks through existing walls, and serves your highest and best self regardless of any painful immediate outcome.
Pursuing what’s of the highest good for yourself contributes not only to the life you were meant to flourish in, but also to a more progressive collective consciousness.
Sharing what resonates as true for you especially when it’s not easy to say is one of the most powerful ways we grow with others. A universal spirit of “truth, beauty and goodness” exists within your soul that you can consciously connect with to help navigate difficult conversations in a healthy direction forward.
The catch is – it almost always comes with some angst we need to be willing to sift through. Yes – our own soul growth that sometimes can feel like a tornado! It requires having a little faith.
The Dynamics of Soul Interaction
At the soul level, we are all teachers and students in our interactions that continuously changes hands. Just as parents initially think they are teaching their children, it gets clear pretty quickly that it’s also the other way around.
Same is true for bosses and their staff, teachers and their students, coaches and our clients.
There’s a dance of taking on both roles during our most difficult conversations we need to reach the other side in a better place.
When we find ourselves tangled up in a sticky situation where we don’t own our own truth, we can get blocked with a grudge, pride, resentment or worse: self-betrayal.
If you do not find a way to release this toxic energy, its low vibration will bear on your soul in hidden ways that affect your mental, emotional & physical well-being.
We all know stress in all its forms can slowly or suddenly take your life.
The Greatest Challenge:
Imagine a painful situation where you’ve felt misunderstood or inappropriately treated. You’ve taken reflection time to know where you stand.
You know what you want to say, but are you ready to face the messy, possibly ugly consequences of someone else’s response to your truth? Perhaps you’ve already said some things that didn’t land well.
Speaking from your soul ensures you won’t have regrets because you speak your truth, it is your truth. How someone else responds is simply a choice you need to be prepared to allow for.
8 Practices for How to Speak Your Truth from Your Soul
1. Start with The End in Mind: Serenity
The reason we’re speaking up is to clear something that feels unresolved and still hurtful. We can’t avoid pain, but we can heal our hurt.
We know our emotional reactions can get in the way of misunderstandings, or saying things we regret later.
One key to avoiding unnecessary drama is sorting out internally what’s genuinely coming from our soul versus falsely coming from our ego’s need to control, demand or lash out to protect itself from further hurt.
The “18 ” longest journey” from our head (mind) to our heart (what rings true for your soul) requires moving from our fears where our ego has become self-destructive over to our soul that knows what’s true, beautiful, and good for us.
To speak from our heart, we need to be connected to our soul.
Are you going into a conversation from a place of serenity that can handle whatever gets erupted on the other side without falling apart in despair of going into any form of attack?
I don’t mean not having any emotions – I mean taking your emotions and using them as weapons. There’s a big difference here. In our world, meanness has sadly become normalized by too many in authority and influential positions. The impact is devastating.
Chances are you will feel genuinely angry, frustrated and sad as everything surfaces about what’s real for you, but if you have not developed solid footing to hold space for both sides while moving just a little bit forward – you can end up making it worse for yourself, and someone else.
Have you built the inner strength (maintaining dignity, decency, and respect) to handle whatever the reaction may be? Think worst case scenario, and still being able to come back to your peace.
Here’s a practice I’ve used to build our inner foundation:
It begins with the Serenity Prayer..
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference.
~Reinhold Niebuhr
Next, turn it around into an asking and listening practice. In the early morning when everyone is asleep, take 5 minutes to ask these questions in silence:
• What do I need to accept that I cannot change?
• What can I change I need courage for?
• Where am I unclear about what I can & cannot change that’s left me feeling stuck?
Trust, and listen deeply for an answer. At first, it will sound like your thoughts popping in. With practice, you’ll intuitively hear ideas, inspiration – wisdom pouring in from a place beyond your ‘thinking mind’.
Every single person has this capability to hear intuitively.
Grab a journal, and write down what comes to mind or reflect on what shows up. Is there any action you’re feeling called to do?
Pay attention to any sensations you feel in your body to indicate that you are indeed hearing from a higher source. I get consistent vibrations in my hands and solar plexus area now whenever I’m in this space of “asking and receiving”, but it feels different for each of us.
Over time, this is one practice can help you reach a “peace that surpasses all understanding” you’ll need to start speaking from your soul.
You’ll be able to say what needs to be said without the emotional aftermath that can derail you.
2. Stay Away from the Personal, but Stay true to what’s Genuine
Have you ever been confused about the expression “don’t take it personally” when you’re dealing with someone where it is personal? Maybe you’ve heard “don’t care what others think because it’s none of your business”, but you care because this person is someone you value and respect!
I came across a little book some years ago called “the Impersonal Life”. The bottom line? “God is impersonal” or is “no respecter of persons”. God sees us all equally and doesn’t take anything we say or do personally – there is no judging anyone.
It made the most remarkable sense.
We are not speaking from our soul when we take someone personally.
Some of us have mastered the art of burying our feelings so much that we’re not aware of what we authentically feel sometimes. Getting underneath to our vulnerable feelings means we are tapping into an underlying value being hit that doesn’t feel right.
If you feel offended, someone is behaving in ways you would not dream of treating someone. That dream belongs to you. See if you can understand their choices even though it doesn’t work for you. Then you’ll know exactly WHAT you disagree with instead of thinking WHO you think is being a @$*%.
To the extent that you don’t create a space where you can genuinely show up, is where you will be a stranger to someone. What you don’t want is to become a stranger to yourself. So seek out your soul tribe – they will appear more and more when you show up.
If you’ve told yourself too many times ‘this battle isn’t worth fighting’, consider that recurring un-fought battles build on each other, and settle into “you just don’t get me” creating walls that will eventually erupt.
When silent or open battles fail to reach the other side with the people who matter, it’s because one or both sides are not speaking from their soul.
3. Let Go of Expectations
It’s hard to not go into a difficult conversation without wanting to change someone’s mind or have them understand you, but this is exactly what we need to let go of.
The reason we share from our soul is for our own peace of mind, and to create an opportunity for someone to share their experience so you can see the whole picture, and make adjustments going forward. Will you invest more energy here or less now based on what you now see?
Sometimes the real reason we don’t speak up is because we’re secretly afraid not of the reaction itself, or what someone will think, but how we know we must respond to the reaction we’ve been avoiding. When you speak your truth, it invites someone else to respond, which tells you their truth. The positive or negative reaction can be exactly what you need in order to move forward – either closer or further away.
4. Watch Out for Blaming
Studies show that we tend to blame circumstances for our mistakes, but if someone else makes a mistake, we tend to blame the person. We also notice things to confirm what we already believe, and tend to ignore or place less importance on what does not.
Our sense of truth is naturally skewed in our own direction, and that’s OK as long as you realize so is everyone else’s! By blaming (also complaining) about someone, we’re basically sitting in resistance against someone else’s truth, which means you’re going in trying to prove your truth, which is very different energy than independently speaking what’s true for you.
Your soul doesn’t blame. Period.
Do you know someone where you’re very careful what you say or you feel like you’re walking on eggshells around them? They can get easily offended and have mastered the art of blaming. They also don’t understand this idea that there are 2 truths – mine and yours. Instead, they think: “if only you were in my shoes or went through what I did – then you’d get it”. This is partially true.
But even if you do get the situation, your experience of it would be different because your souls are different.
To speak from your soul, you must move away from any blaming and complaining. Your soul is all about taking responsibility for your choices – it’s where infinite possibilities exist.
5. Be Open to Someone’s Else’s Version of Reality
The difference between a friend and an acquaintance is our shared experiences, but also being able to share unapologetically what it is we do experience. These are the moments that go beyond the surface to the soul.
With your closest soul connections, you’ll say: “I’ve never thought about it that way before!” You get to see from another’s experience, which you’d think would happen more often, but we’re not vulnerable with most people, where we get a glimpse into their soul.
Instead, we can get confined to our own truth only allowing people in where there’s harmony.
The best soul tribe is filled with a wide variety of people who think differently from you where you know how to disagree safely.
Conflict happens when we project our own truth onto others based on our experiences when it’s their experiences that we don’t know or understand that gives them their truth.
Move into genuine curiosity with questions that are seeking “What’s really going on over there in their world?”, and whatever answer comes back, receive it from a place of “just noticing” what it’s like for this person, not for you. The goal is to find out “where is this person coming from?”
Keep in mind the fact that someone else’s values and beliefs no matter how much you love, respect or think you know them will not exactly match yours. There’s a place where you can ‘agree to disagree’, and still be connected because your different soul experiences have finally touched down into one another.
6. Come from a Forgiving Place
It may seem backwards, but you need to have forgiven before you can speak from your soul. We have this idea that we need to hash it all out first, and then decide “do I forgive this person?”
If we don’t give someone the benefit of the doubt that they were doing the best they could to start with – we’ll be judging them because of how we feel we’ve been treated. We go in on defensive mode, and from here, things will escalate.
I have to be in acceptance that someone else’s life experiences create different fears in them that affect their choices. This is not an excuse, but I didn’t walk their road & as a result wouldn’t have responded the same way because they have their lessons, and I have mine.
When I get surprised or upset by someone’s behaviour, deep down I know it’s me who missed something about this person. I made an incorrect assumption based on my reality believing they would choose like me.
Their best may be coming from a darker path – but that’s their free will according to what works for them.
Everything shifts to forgiveness when I allow someone what I also want: the space to choose from my own reality.
I don’t want anyone telling me what’s “best for me” because only I know from my experience, and this goes for everyone no matter how irrational or hurtful it feels to me. It can be hard to wrap our minds around the desire we have for other people to take responsibility for what’s true for us.
When someone behaves in ways that baffle me, I trust it comes from fearful experiences or negative programming that has not been healed. It’s less about someone deliberately attacking me, and more about their capacity to connect within themselves, which is not my responsibility. Remembering this helps me find compassion.
Forgive first and you’ll be speaking from your soul.
7. Trust Your Experience Most of All
When you speak from your soul there’s a mystical resonance you may sense in your body, hear in your mind & feel in your heart. A synergy comes together where it’s difficult not to be who you are.
It’s truth is bigger than you and connects with a greater good mixed with your desire to experience and grow.
Speaking from our soul comes from the part of us so clear, and calm that you trust your truth no matter what anyone else thinks or how they react. It feels aligned with your experiences and the values you live by.
We tend to think of truth as absolute where someone is telling the truth, and someone else is lying. It’s rarely this way, otherwise it would much easier to reach clear resolutions! Instead, truth is relative to your experience.
We have different truths experiencing the exact same thing. Having faith in a higher truth recognizes our experiences are part of a collective consciousness with the one golden rule of treating someone the way you want to be treated – with respect, decency, and kindness.
What’s right for me from my experience can differ from what’s right for you. We need to give each other space to trust our experiences, and still maintain the golden rule by not judging each other for the truth that flows from here.
8. See Perfectly Without Judgment
Our soul is on an ascendant path towards the perfection of love, but we arrived perfectly imperfect to learn, grow and experience what love is in all kinds of different ways. We love when we see each other without judgment – perfectly.
Your soul is the essence of who you are as a spiritual being as opposed to ways we identify as a human being through our mind, body and emotions. It’s easiest to think of your soul as a container that accumulates your experiences of spiritual value, which are taken with you into your eternal life where your soul continues to evolve.
There is a greater reason for speaking your truth from your soul. You need to let go of ‘unresolved energies’ not just to enjoy life here, but because these heavier energies we hold like judgment, guilt, or shame have to be released for our soul to cross over.
There is an understanding “as above, so below” — on earth as it is in heaven. Only the truth of your life goes with you..and that rests in your ‘soul trust’.
When we remember to take care of our soul first, ahead of our mind, and body – we can speak our truth from our soul.
