The tide is going to shift for many of us who have been accustomed to working from home and practising social distancing over the previous few months. When we face larger groups of people and try to negotiate interactions with more than one or two participants after experiencing loneliness, zoom fatigue, and other consequences of isolation, we may start to feel disoriented.
When you add in concerns about social distance, it's possible that you'll be so preoccupied with reading social cues and maintaining a safe distance that you won't be able to follow what's being said at all, let alone intervene with your own views and opinions. Many of us are shy, but our friends and coworkers can't tell what we're thinking when our doubt or self-consciousness nearly turns into silence. Even when we're not coming out of a three-month quarantine, putting our thoughts into words and then uttering them out loud is a complicated process requiring multiple different brain and nerve activities. As we move forward and begin to reassemble and rebuild our communities, we will all experience a range of emotions in response to these changes, ranging from dread to exhilaration to, yes, even greater uncertainty. But, like the most extroverted personalities among us, we all deserve to be a part of the renewal process and raise our voices. Here are some of our finest suggestions for speaking up in a group setting: 1. Put yourself to the test. Set a definite, measurable goal for yourself to speak more. Can you participate once in two of the three meetings you have this week? More? Can you participate in the conversation at least three times if you're having dinner with friends? Determine how much you now contribute and make a small increase.Challenge yourself to speak up twice if you generally only speak up once or know you'll have to speak up once to report on a specific assignment. (Be careful not to overwork yourself! This will make the task appear much more insurmountable). If you meet your objective this week, raise it a notch the next week. 2. Get your bearings. This mindfulness technique aids in the creation of more mental space for presence and focus. Feel the ground beneath your feet and bend your knees slightly to feel the weight of your entire body if you're standing. Feel your back against the back of the chair, your bottom down, and your feet on the floor if you're seated.Rather than feeling light and fluttery, being grounded allows us to focus on the conversation at hand, gives us a more confident appearance, and sends signals to our brain that might help us physically feel more confident. 3. Speak with assurance. Prepare yourself mentally to project your voice and over-articulate, and then do it! Even if you aren't feeling secure, speaking loudly and clearly will make you sound more confident. If you keep this voice, you might start to feel more confident yourself—fake it til you make it is a neurobiological premise! Projection advice: Choose a person who is seated far away and cast your vote for them. 4.Make a nonverbal signal that you want to take part. When it comes to people talking over you, we try so hard to break past our silence barrier, yet no one notices we want to speak (or the other people in the group are hogging the conversation a bit). To get a word in edgewise, use some of these cues: Holding a hand or a finger in the air. Sitting up and forward in your chair while keeping your gaze fixed on the speaker. I'm pointing at them. With a forceful nod or a vigorous shake of the head. These actions demonstrate that you have strong feelings about what is being stated and that you have more to say.
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September 2021
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