This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

Hey, hey, how we doing? This will likely come as no surprise to anybody who's ever listened to this show.

But one thing I really do not struggle with is using my voice.

In fact, I've been told on more than one occasion that I use my voice way too much that I should sometimes just shut the fuck up.

However, I am well aware that this is not the case for many,

many people, including for my wife, Dr. Bianca Harris, who's going to join me today as a co-host

for this interview. Our guest is Elaine Lynn Herring, who's a former lecturer at Harvard Law

School, and who now works with both companies and individuals to build communication skills

to help people handle both

conflict and collaboration, which, brief aside, I have to say, is an incredibly important thing

to teach. These basic communication skills are vastly undervalued, in my opinion.

Anyway, Elaine has written a book. It's called Unlearning Silence, and it's about how and when to speak up,

as well as how to stop silencing other people, which has been a problem for me. Honestly, I'm not

proud to admit that, but that is true. In this conversation, we talk about how and why many of us

learn to self-silance and self-edit, often at a very early age, what the health consequences

can be from self-silencing,

how we often miscalculate the costs and benefits of speaking up. In other words, it will often

go better than you fear it might. We talk about Elaine's four steps for how you can learn to use

your voice, times when it actually makes sense to stay silent, and how we can unintentionally silence other

people, even people we love. In fact, Bianca and I talk about our own experiences with this

very dynamic in our own marriage. Before we dive in, I want to do a quick plug here for the new

10% app. So cool to be able to say those words. The app has just gone live. We will be doing a free New

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