Why Bother? (And Other Bad Thinking)

Have you ever heard yourself saying those words? “Why bother speaking up? It won’t do any good.” Or, “I’ve tried speaking up in the past, and no one cared.” Or, “Speaking up isn’t valued around here. I’ll just keep my head down and do my job.” I hear you. It’s easy to let past experiences jade us into losing our voice. It’s tempting to let our assumptions take over and persuade us that we already know the response. After all, we’ve seen this movie before, and it doesn’t end well. So the troublesome issue continues, which validates our thinking: The other guy is a jerk who won’t listen. Trust erodes further. So we speak up even less, further convincing ourselves that it wouldn’t do any good.