This week we are going back to a topic we covered a couple of months ago about defending ourselves too much rather than valuing our own opinions. If you need a refresher or are jump starting your day, click here to listen to the episode from January 9 titled “Learn To Value Your Opinions More”.
Every time you defend yourself for something you don’t feel you have to, you are limiting your belief in yourself.
You are lessening the positivity you have, the confidence you have cultivated, and your determination to grow begins to lack.
When these things happen due to constant defending within a professional or business setting, your will to be a high performer declines.
More often than not in the professional workplace, we are faced with the decisions to allow others to overshadow our opinions and hard work, leading us to defend our opinions and understanding of situations. However, we can choose to stand by our opinions and our hard work because we value it while also learning from the information shared by others.
Why does it always have to be if one person is right the other person is wrong. Don’t both opinions provide value and a learning experience?
The more we get caught up in constantly defending ourselves, the more we begin to lose a bit of our integrity and strength. We are all given the choices to stand up for ourselves or to be bullied into giving into the other “right” person; which are you choosing?
Now with that, working as a team in a professional environment is extremely important and our opinions will not always be right. Growing, developing, and proving ourselves as determined and intelligent comes from learning from others and if your opinion is not always chosen to be the “right” one, determine if it is because you are not being valued or if it is more so a decision made amongst a group of leaders and individuals. Sometimes our opinions or the information we share isn’t WRONG in factual ways but may just not be right for the situation at hand. And that brings a learning lesson! Always take situations as learning lessons.
The important thing though is that you communicate effectively with your coworkers. Share your opinions, show your intelligence on a matter and the value that you bring. If your opinion is not “selected” as being the correct one time around, continue to remain strong and your value will be appreciated.
It is when you continuously defend yourself and apologize for having a strong-willed mindset and a high performers work ethic that your confident mindset will begin to wither. Remember, growth and development of leadership and high performance skills is what you constantly want to strive for; remain steadfast in valuing your own opinion, while also respecting others’, and you will feel more confident day by day.
If and when you defend yourself, why are you doing it? Are you embarrassed to stand up for what you think and belief? Are you intimidated? Usually when we are forced to defend ourselves, we are left feeling insecure and knowing that we aren’t exactly being true to our genuine selves.
When defending ourselves becomes a recurring event, we are unable to truly grasp the understanding of the importance that valuing our own opinions has. When we remain steadfast in the belief that our opinions matter, we choose to not let others ‘win’ for the sake of winning; we choose to grow not only individually but as a team.
Week after week we learn that growth comes in all aspects. Professional settings, with family and friends, individually-growth comes from understanding that standing our ground with our opinions does not mean that we are letting ego creep in and have to always be right. It means that we value our opinions, our knowledge, and the intelligence we want to share with others.
To learn more about honoring your own opinions and how to defend yourself less, listen to my podcast episode “Learn to Value Your Opinion More” from January 9 by clicking here. And please take a minute to rate the podcast if you have been enjoying what you are hearing or have specific topics you would like to learn more about. For iPhone users, go to your Podcast app, search Change by Choice, and click “Reviews”.
Thank you for tuning in and for always striving to live a life of high performance.