The world is sometimes harsh and doesn’t care about what other people think, say, or feel. That’s when you realize having a firm voice or the courage to speak up is very important, or in other words, expressing yourself. Expressing yourself is an essential aspect in all areas of your life. You need to express yourself when you’re at work with your colleagues and bosses. You also need it when you’re with your family, friends, and partner. Most importantly, you need to express yourself when you need to firmly stand on an issue and get your message across.
Despite its importance, expressing yourself isn’t always an easy feat. For starters, some of you may not even know what you want to say or feel. Or perhaps you know what you want to express but don’t know how to articulate it properly. On the other hand, others of you may be intimidated by the idea of expressing yourself due to the fear of rejection or judgment. So you may prefer to be silent in the corners while waiting for someone to muster up the nerve to speak up and express themselves. However, there are ways you could improve on this aspect.
How To Get Better At Expressing Yourself
Your lack of self-expression or having a weak throat chakra may lead people to quickly take you for granted, especially if they’ve gotten used to seeing you being silent and agreeable to anything. This is when feelings of being neglected, unheard of, and suppressed would often arise. As your opinion is often unheard of, it’d be harder for you to make decisions, your self-confidence would start to decline, and it could hinder you from achieving your goals in life.
Thus, it’s important to know how to let go of your fears, voice out your feelings, and express yourself effectively. Fortunately, there are methods and throat chakra healing techniques you could practice to boost and sharpen your self-expression skills. To start, here are eight ways to get better at expressing yourself.
1. Acknowledge Your Emotions
One main reason many people have difficulty expressing their emotions is they’re ashamed of recognizing them. A good example is when you’re feeling upset or angry toward another person who forgot to show up at your scheduled meetup. Instead of expressing your disappointment or anger, you choose to hide or ignore it and simply tell the other person it’s okay. Doing this often would only make you feel depressed and anxious as you become more detached from your feelings.
It’s vital to remind yourself that having emotions is part of being human and all your emotions are valid. So stop invalidating your own feelings and start acknowledging them. Get in touch with your emotions and tell them what you really feel. Acknowledging your emotions and expressing yourself is part of improving your mental and emotional wellness.
2. Be Mindful Of Your Emotions
After recognizing your emotions, it’s also important to practice mindfulness. Being attentive to your emotions could help you think more clearly about how to express your feelings appropriately. Self-expression could be challenging, especially when you’re under the influence of extreme anger, frustration, or sadness, which could lead to hurtful or unhelpful responses.
Thus, it’s crucial to practice mindfulness to help you connect with your inner voice, be in tune with your emotions, and make meaningful responses. Here are some steps you could do to help you be more mindful of your emotions:
- Focus on your breathing.
- Try to label the emotions you’re currently feeling.
- Know the circumstances surrounding this emotion.
- Check your breathing and see how it reacts to the emotion.
- Notice if any part of your body gets tensed while feeling this emotion.
Now that you know how this emotion is affecting your mind and body, this would help you decide how to deal with this emotion properly and express it in a way you won’t hurt or offend anyone. Moreover, this would also help you do certain actions or create decisions you won’t regret later on.
3. Let Go Of What People Think
It’s understandable to feel scared and intimated about the idea of putting yourself and your opinions out there. You may be scared of being rejected, ridiculed, and judged because of your emotions and views. So you choose to keep them hidden and be safe from a possible backlash from all the people around you.
However, the more you care about what people think, the more you tend to suppress your feelings and opinions. Thus, it would help if you practiced how to let go of what people may think about you. This may be tough, but it’s possible.
Note that letting go of your fear of others’ thoughts and opinions is different from being insensitive toward other people’s feelings. Letting go only means you need to express yourself because it’s important to you and not because you intend to hurt or offend anyone.
To help you let go of your insecurities and fears about other people’s judgment and rejection, start by reminding yourself every day that you exist not to impress anyone but yourself. This would help slowly build your confidence. Sooner or later, as you become more confident and comfortable with your own skin, you’d start taking action and care less about what others would think. After all, whether you say something good or bad, there would always be people who would judge and reject you. So let go of what they think and start living to impress yourself.
4. Write Down Your Feelings
If you’re having a tough time expressing yourself vocally, you could always practice first by writing it down on paper. Writing down your feelings in a journal could be a perfect way of connecting with yourself. There are people who feel safer and freer every time they express themselves on paper. It may be worthwhile to try doing this, too.
For instance, if you want to express your romantic feelings for someone, it would help to write down all your emotions on paper and organize them. Another is writing down your speech before submitting a report to your boss. As you read through the things you wrote down, you’d understand your emotions or opinions and think of ways on how to address or tell them to the other person properly.
5. Express Yourself Creatively
Expressing yourself isn’t only limited to speaking. There are numerous ways on how you could express yourself, and the key is to go for the one that’s most comfortable and convenient for you. For instance, if you’re not good at expressing yourself verbally, you could always write your thoughts down if you think you’re better at it.
Another creative example is projecting your emotions through clothes. When you’re feeling sad about hearing certain news, you could express it by wearing dark colors to portray those feelings. On the other hand, if you’re feeling happy today after receiving good news, you could wear bright and vivid colors to express your happiness.
Acknowledging your feelings and expressing them creatively are great ways of connecting with yourself and improving your emotional and mental state. Other creative options of self-expression may include dancing, singing, doing art, poem writing, playing sports, and songwriting.
6. Practice Speaking The Truth
Perhaps there were situations in your past where you chose to walk away and left some things unsaid because of the fear of hurting people with the truth. However, the more you do this, the more you’d have regrets and beat yourself up as you later realize you should’ve opened up and told people exactly what you felt.
So to get better at expressing yourself, it’d be best to start practicing telling the truth without fear. This may take some time, but soon it’d be easier for you as you gradually do it. After speaking the truth twice or more, it could become a part of your way of life.
7. Avoid Repeating History
One common mistake some people make when expressing themselves is rehashing the past. Some people tend to use past events to prove a point during a conversation. However, recalling past events and using them to express yourself may only lead to more misunderstanding and confuse the message you’re trying to convey. As a result, you’d end up feeling shut down and misunderstood, and it puts the other party on defense.
So remember, whenever you express yourself, always try to stay and focus on the present. Resolve present issues with new solutions rather than use past events to prove a point and create more conflict.
8. Listen Attentively
Part of improving your self-expression is becoming a good and attentive listener. It’s hard to express yourself when you’re constantly pushing your point without listening to the other party. Doing this could potentially ruin your relationships with other people.
Expressing yourself is not always about proving yourself right and the other person wrong. Instead, it’s about discussing your opinions or emotions with others and working on them together. So challenge yourself to practice attentive listening and not just listen to respond.
Conclusion
Expressing yourself effectively may not be a natural skill for you, and that’s okay because it happens to many people. Thankfully, there’s always room for learning to become a better communicator. Self-expression is a skill you can continue to work on and practice every day, and you can begin by incorporating these tips into your life.
