You've probably eaten a sandwich when you really would have preferred to go get dumplings.

You've probably turned out help you badly needed because you didn't want to be a burden.

You've probably sat in a meeting and bitten your tongue while Greg from sales monologued about a stupid idea that you knew would fail.

Your brain tells you that it's safer to stay silent than to speak up.

But that's because the part of

your brain making that decision is only considering the short-term pain of asking for what you want

and enduring the self-consciousness, anxiety, and shame that follow. Today I want to talk about

what avoiding those feelings costs you. When you really see it, it becomes harder to justify

swallowing your words all the time.

So today we are going to slow the whole thing down. We're going to play out how a single moment

from the smallest to the biggest can impact your life when you don't speak up. By the end,

you may feel called out, but that's a good thing. Welcome to unfuck your brain. I'm your host Kara

Lowentile, master certified coach, and founder of the School of New Feminist Thub. I'm here to

help you turn down your anxiety, turn up your confidence, and create a life on your own terms,

one that you're truly excited to live. Let's go. Let's start with the smallest

example. It's lunchtime and your coworkers are sorting out where to order from. Everybody else is

excited about the sandwich place. And you don't really want a sandwich. You know bread doesn't sit well

with you. You know exactly how your afternoon goes after you eat a sandwich. You know bread doesn't sit well with you. You know exactly how your

afternoon goes after you eat a sandwich. So here's what runs through your head in about four seconds flat. Now, if I say something, they're going to think I'm being picky. They'll think I'm being difficult. I don't want to be that person who's always going on and on about what she could eat and what she can't eat. And I don't want to make everyone order from a place they like less just so that I can have something different like I'm more important than they are. And I don't want to go just get my own lunch because then I'm not a team player or it looks like I'm making some big virtuous statement about how I eat. So you go along with it. You order the sandwich. You eat the sandwich. And then the totally predictable thing

happens. You spend the whole afternoon bloated and foggy. You get almost nothing done. You feel so

off that you skip dinner and then at 10 p.m. you're standing at the kitchen counter, eating snacks you don't

even want. You sleep badly. You wake up the next morning, already dragging. Watch what just happened there.

...